A Stress-Free Solution for Handling Absent Students
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One of the most stressful and time-consuming things I had to deal with my first few years of teaching was how to handle student absences! With multiple classes throughout the day in middle school, there are often lots of student absences throughout the day. I was spending a good chunk of time at the end of the day filling out absent sheets for every single one. Since I implemented my current solution, I no longer have to worry about this because my students completely take care of it!
So what is this magical solution? A class secretary! If you’ve read my post about my classroom jobs, you know that this is one of 10 jobs I use in my classroom. Even if you don’t want to implement a full classroom jobs system, though, you could just have a class secretary. You could easily ask for volunteers or nominate a student in each class to be the class secretary. There are always a few students who love to help out!
My class secretary is in charge of filling out absent sheets for any students who are gone in their class period each day. I train them to ask me at the beginning of class who is absent that day, and then they fill out the absent sheet(s) and staple any handouts to it.
In the picture above, you can see what my Absent Student Center looks like. I have a hanging wall organizer with folders for Monday through Friday. I keep a big stack of blank absent sheets behind the Monday folder, so the secretary can just grab them as needed. They let me know when I’m running low so I can make more copies. You can get the absent sheets I use here! (The poster hanging next to it is from Teaching the Distance.)
I keep an agenda board updated each day so the secretary can easily find all the information needed to fill out the forms.
After filling out the absent sheets, the secretary places them in that day’s folder. So if today is a Tuesday, the papers for that day will go in the Tuesday folder.
When a students return to school after being absent, they know to check the folder for the day they were gone to get their absent work. They can then follow up with me if they have any questions or if they need to schedule an assessment they missed.
And that’s it! Super easy. Do you have any tips for handling student absences?
12 Comments
Cassie Jennings
Do you have a copy of the poster that you hung beside your hanging file? I love it!
Math With Meaning
Hi Cassie! Here’s a link to the poster: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Absent-and-Missing-Work-Poster-3737147.
Angelise
Second that. I love the poster idea as well and would love a copy.
Math With Meaning
Here’s a link to the poster: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Absent-and-Missing-Work-Poster-3737147.
Olivia
Hi! My student teaching mentor taught me this same method! He also kept a whiteboard calendar to mark what the class did for the month! I love your file organizer. Where did you get it? 😊
Math With Meaning
Hi Olivia! I love the calendar idea. I got the file organizer on Amazon, but it’s not available in that color there anymore. However, I did a little digging and I found it on Carson Dellosa’s website – looks like it even has free shipping if you sign up for their free rewards program! Here’s the link: https://www.carsondellosa.com/158567–file-folder-storage-teal-pocket-chart-158567. If you’d rather stick to Amazon, here’s an affiliate link to a similar one: https://amzn.to/2MuNW9V. Hope that helps!
Amberly York
I ordered your poster, but it does not allow me to change the size or color of the font. How do you do that?
Math With Meaning
Hi Amberly! That poster is actually not mine – I just linked to it on another seller’s TpT store. You can go to the listing and use the “Product Q&A” tab to ask the seller.
Rozina Jamil
Hi Megan,
I love your ideas and have bought some resources from you that I am excited to use. I wanted to ask about the absent form system as I was just going to buy it. Once the student is back and takes the form to see what they had missed, how do you track if they follow through? My main problem is having them complete the missed work and if I staple their quiz or other handouts with that absent slip then it’s gone from my view and I would forget that they had to turn in that particular sheet or a quiz. Also how will I get the proof of all missed work to show the parents if the absent slip is with the student?
Thank you for your help!
Rozina.
Math With Meaning
Hi Rozina! I have a clipboard where I keep track of homework assignments – when I check an assignment, I make a note if anyone is absent or doesn’t have the assignment. I then keep a list of missing assignments on a whiteboard at the back of my room – once they’ve turned it in, I erase their name. I would guess that most students won’t have an issue with completing their work to the point that you would need to involve a parent, but if there are a few who do, you could maybe make copies of the absent sheets whenever those students are gone to keep a record for parents, or email the parents a quick summary of what was missed and/or is still missing. Hope that helps!
Tali
Thanks for the article. This looks like a great system for absences and I can see it working for paper and digital assignments. How do you distinguish work for different classes/grade levels? Does absent work from all classes go into the same folder or is there one folder for each grade level or class?
Math With Meaning
Hi Tali! I taught two grade levels and just put them all in the same folder. So if a kid was absent Monday, he would just look through the papers in the Monday folder for the one with his name on it – didn’t really matter if there were different grade levels in there. You could definitely separate them if you wanted to, though!