At our school, students get their first lockers in grade 5. Which means, by grade 6, when they come to me, they should theoretically be well aware of the proper use of a locker, mainly knowing the proper use of a lock.
Our school rents locks to the students. If they return them at the end of the year, they get their money back. It’s honestly a wonderful system. However, many students seem to forget the fact that locks are supposed to be locked when you’re not at your locker. Locks that are simply hanging there are not protecting your personal belongings. Now, I don’t expect my students to have extremely valuable things in their lockers as I have a classroom safe to keep electronics and other items of high value, but just to ensure their stuff does not go missing, they should keep their locks locked.
It has been such a problem, and students do not let the reminders “sink in”, I have been personally forced to come up with a solution to this problem, and I’m thinking my solution is genius (of course only time will tell).
I am choosing to collect the locks each time I see one that is unlocked. Every locker contains the belongings of two of my students and thus I only have 11 lockers to check. I take the locker, write down the number of the locker, and when I have time while other students are working, these students must show me they can open their locks 30 times. I tell them when they can start, and assure them that if they do not hold up the lock for me to see that it is opened, and I do not write a tick, it did not count.
So far, this seems to be working very well. They seem to almost make a game of it at first, but as some become frustrated and slow down to concentrate, the point seems to be getting across. When one partner is done, the other locker mate must come do their 30 turns as well. It takes awhile, but they sit across from my desk and I make sure to have a piece of paper and a pencil handy and am able to watch my class working and record “tick marks” at the same time. I am also sure to say to the students afterwards that they have now proven to me that they are truly capable of locking and unlocking their locks. So far, I love it.
Only once have I had students leave it unlocked twice, and the result was to do the same thing 40 times. I asked afterwards if he would forget again. He told me no, and so far I have always seen it locked. I will keep you posted on how well this goes!
Calm in Christ and Fitness 