Tomorrow is World Stationery Day. Here are some ideas for how to incorporate this into your classroom:
Pen vs. Pencil
“Do Year [X] students write more words per minute with a pen or a pencil?”
Have half your class start with a pencil and the other half with a pen for a 1-minute writing sprint, then swap. It’s a fantastic way to discuss measurement error, reproducibility, and individual variability.
Gel Pen vs. Ballpoint Pen
A 2025 study in the American Journal of Human Psychology showed that gel pens significantly outperformed ballpoint pens in both writing speed and total word count. This study provides an excellent real-world context for teaching concepts such as paired t-tests and the Wilcoxon Rank Test, and the distinction between statistical significance and practical effect size.
