It's Material
First-grade teacher Becky Warren of Jenera, Ohio, uses plain or small-patterned fabric as the background for her bulletin boards, noting that it doesn't fade or tear like paper, and can be used for many years. When it's no longer good enough to use on the board, she says it makes a great cover for shelves over the summer months.

Where Was I?
To put her third-grade class into an "inquiry mood" and to use students' prior knowledge based on observation, teacher Delores Wright of Orlando, Fla., sent each student a photo from a trip she had taken to Africa (the children were unaware of her trip). She asked students to guess where she had traveled, based on the photo, then had them place their guesses in a box on "Meet the Teacher Day." On the first day of school, she read all the guesses and confirmed the "real" answer. Each student who had guessed correctly was given a small token.

Bag It
To streamline distributing dry-erase markers to her middle school students, French teacher Ginni Brandt of Sidney, N.Y., came up with the idea of taping plastic zip bags to the side of each desk; each bag contains a marker and an old rag (socks work well) to use as an eraser. Students each have a board stored at their desks. All the materials are readily available; as soon as students are done, markers and cleaners are returned to the bag. Brandt says the process cuts down on doodling and wasting costly markers.

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