Absentee Kids

I always have a hard time keeping up with who was absent and when from day to day. Of course I take attendance and keep good records. I'm just not the kind of teacher that takes pleasure out of chasing kids down to give them missing work to make up. It isn't my priority. I have better things to do on a day to day basis. I'm all about what makes sense and is the most practical solution. The less effort for me, the better. My solution: The "While you were out" board seen in my last post.

I keep a blank calendar template from one of those teacher sets. Next to the calendar I keep a stack of post it notes. It is a student job to fill out the post it note with assignments we did that day and stick it on the calendar. The beauty of using the post it note is that I can arrange them as needed and I can stick them onto sheets of paper and store in a file in my cabinet just in case. In the folders next to the calendar I place handouts, worksheets and copies of notes. Originally I labeled it by days of the week because I was only teaching science. After tweaking this idea for awhile I realized that labeling the folders by period number and the handouts with student names worked better. A third way you could label those folders is by subject area if you are a self contained teacher in elementary.