LAMINATE IT Having back-to-back 40-minute classes makes it hard to complete individual class charts with comments on student behavior, class preparation and homework before the next class enters, says Pamela Signor, a fifth-grade science teacher in Aurora, N.Y. She laminates a class list for each period and with a dry-erase marker makes appropriate notations on the list. At the end of her day she can quickly go to the charts to determine who should get reward tickets, etc. She then wipes off the sheet and uses it again the next day—no daily paper waste.

COMMIT TO MEMORY Karen Abrahams, a second-grade teacher in Chelsea, Mass., helps her students memorize poems or lyrics by writing them on an overhead transparency or the board. She has the students read or sing the words twice, then erase one word in each line. Students read or sing again, remembering the missing words. Repeat the procedure until all the words are erased. "Voila: They will know it by heart!" she says.

GOT PENCILS? Tired of providing pens and pencils to kids who forget their supplies, middle school teacher Sherri Daley of Fairfield, Conn., started picking up lost pens and pencils from the floor in halls, classrooms, near the buses outside and the cafeteria. "You would be surprised what you find on the floor in school!" she says. She puts her "found pencils" in a glass on the table at the front of her classroom for those who need them.