7 Unique Ways to Take Attendance
In my classes, I don’t call role. Shocking, I know. If you’re curious about why I’ve made the decision not to call role in my ESL classroom, I explain my ideas here:
But how do you take attendance if you don’t call role? Here are 7 unique ways to take attendance without calling role!
1) Use a Seating Chart
This is a tried-and-true method, which is why most schools implement a seating chart. Seating charts work exceptionally well, especially with younger students. Not only does it make taking attendance so much easier, but it also allows organization to trickle down to other areas of your classroom management. It can make handing homework back to students easier, as well as keep papers alphabetized and organized when students hand work in. If it’s possible to have a seating chart, go ahead and do it. (Even if you don’t have a seating chart, students tend to sit in the same seats anyway.) Save your brain power for other things and make attendance a breeze.
2) Have Students Make Name Cards
One semester, I walked into class after another teacher was finished, and I’m pretty sure my jaw actually dropped. This teacher had used a great hack for both taking attendance and remembering students’ names. At the beginning of the semester, he asked students to get out a piece of paper and fold it in half to make a tent shape. Then, he asked students to write their names on the paper. For a fun element, he also told them to personalize the papers with the colors they chose or with any designs they wanted to draw on the paper.
3) Just Count
99% of the time, this is how I take attendance. At the top of each class’s attendance sheet, I’ve written the total number of students in the class. Before I go through each student’s name and face, I just count how many students are in the class. If my attendance sheet says there are 41 students, and I’ve counted 41 students, then I just write “All” for that lesson, and my attendance tracking is done. If the count is lower than it should be, then I go through the list to find out who is missing.
4) Make Students Tell You
This is a new technique I tried last semester, when we were in and out of online classes daily. I told the students that, if they were going to be absent, they needed to tell me. Usually I tell students that they should let me know if they needed to ask for leave (if they had a family emergency or a conflicting school activity). But last semester, I required them to tell me anytime they would be absent, even if they didn’t have a valid “reason.” This made my counting technique go that much faster. If the class was supposed to have 41 students, and only 40 were in the classroom, then I didn’t have to go through the list to see who was missing because I knew John wasn’t going to be there that lesson. Now, I teach college students, so I’m able to give them that responsibility and treat them like adults. If you teach children, that might not be an option for you—but maybe you could ask the parents or any class monitors to let you know!
5) Have Students Take Attendance
At first glance, this might sound odd. But depending on your school, this might be happening anyway. If it’s not already happening, it could be a chance to give responsibility to your students. In China, each class has an attendance class monitor, who is tracking attendance and reporting it to the school on his own. Of course, I still take my own attendance that I send to the school at the end of the semester as well, but if you have a student already taking attendance, it could be a helpful tool for you. In a few of my bigger classes, I’ve asked the class monitor to just remind me of who was absent as he left the classroom. It gives me peace of mind knowing that I have the class monitor to help me double check.
6) Collect Homework
If you have homework each week, collecting homework at the beginning of class can help you track attendance. As you mark down who submitted homework, it will be easy to see who didn’t submit homework. If you reach the end of the homework pile and realize that John and Josie didn’t submit their homework, you can quickly glance around the room to check if they are there and just didn’t submit their homework or if they’re absent.
7) Hand Back Homework
If you’re not collecting homework, then maybe you can hand back homework. This only works if you hand back homework individually, but at the beginning of class, walk around the room and hand back each student’s work. If you’re left with John’s, Josie’s, and Jim’s homework in your hands, well, then they’re absent.
If you’re looking for a way to streamline taking attendance, try these out! Finding ways to make admin work more effortless frees up your mental capacity for things that really matter—like teaching.