The Perfect Attendance-Tracking System
When you first become a teacher or you’re training to become a teacher, the focus is on lesson planning, classroom management, and everyone’s favorite: assessments. When I actually became a teacher, I realized there were so many aspects of teaching I wasn’t prepared for. One of those was taking attendance.
I mean, I’m not an idiot. It’s not that hard to take roll and make check marks next to students’ names. But that first year, there were special “situations” that had quite thought about before. What if a student was present, but came a few minutes late? What if he came half-way through the class? What if he left early? What if a student was absent, but later sent me her doctor’s note to ask for leave?
At the end of the semester, I would always seem to find myself with a system I thought was working, but actually, was just a mess of check marks and “X”s and scribbled notes. And that was just my attendance sheet? Then, I had my participation notes to go through, to find out which students were actively participating each week in class. Then came my homework sheet!
I knew I had to find a better system. Long story short, I have been tweaking and modifying this system for the last eight years, and today I want to share it with you. (Oh, and if you’re Type A like me, you’re going to love this.)
The Roster
Whether you design your own attendance sheet or the school give it to you, it doesn’t really matter. Mine has all my students’ names on the left, and a box for each class period on the right. As long as you have a box or place to write next to each student for each class period, you’re good to go.
The Codes
I use a few simple codes to record basic information. My goal was to make this as minimal as possible, to avoid having to write out lengthy notes that clutter up the page and confuse me when it comes to totaling a grade at the end of the semester.
The three main marks are:
Check mark= Student was present
X = Student was absent
AFL = Student asked for leave, was given permission from the school to miss a class
In the left corner,
L = Student was late
CH= Student came half-way through class. (This is more than just late. This is really late.)
LH= Student left half-way through class. (Children probably won’t do this, but I teach adults.)
In the right corner,
Star= Student completed the homework
L Star = Student completed the homework, but turned it in late
½ Star = Student completed half of the homework assignment. For example, maybe the assignment was to write 10 sentences about travel, but the student only wrote 4 or 5 sentences.)
It sounds like a lot, I’m sure. But it allows me to understand what a student did or didn’t do that class in just a glance! You can scroll through this gallery to see some real-life examples:
The Colors
This is my favorite part, and it makes my type-A heart so happy! I used this system without colors for years, but I always felt like something was missing. You may have noticed there’s no code for tracking participation. I used to write P if they participated, and NP if they were not participating in class. For example, if they were on their phones or just not completing class activities. But the problem I ran into was that, at the end of the semester, as I tried to total up their attendance, homework, and participation scores, I was looking at a paper full of codes. Yes, it was so much better to look at codes than the chaos of scribbled notes, but it still wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be.
Insert colors.
It’s a simple system. Each color has a different meaning.
Orange =Absent
Yellow= Late
Pink= Not participating
Green= Doing an excellent job with participation
Blue= Completed homework
During or after class, I just swipe a line of color in each students’ box. I love how incredibly fast this is as well. If a see a student is not participating in class, I just pick up the pink highlighter and swipe a line on my attendance sheet.
I still do use my codes, but now when I’m totaling final grades at the end of the semester, I’m able to skim the page for different colors to know what points to add or subtract. For example, if I see a yellow line, I immediately know that student was late. I can then take a second to check the code to see if he was just a little late (L) or if he came half-way through class (CH). In addition, I love how objective the system is. We call can tend to under- or over-estimate how well a student did in our class at the end of the semester. But if I’m able to look back through my records and see multiple green lines for a student, then it’s clear to see that his hard work impressed me at multiple times throughout the semester. Likewise, if I see multiple pink lines, I that his lack of effort stood out.
Each teacher’s needs are going to be different, so try the system for yourself, and adapt it to fit your classrooms and your needs! My system is still a work in progress itself. Who knows how I’ll be able to improve it in the future, but I hope this could help you as you track attendance in your classrooms!