0 Organizing Absent Work

Box to Hold Absent Work

In a perfect world, every student would be in class every single day.  Sadly, I don't teach in a perfect world.  Last year, as I began teaching, I knew that I needed to have some way to organize the work that students missed.  I ended up creating a "While You Were Out" Binder that turned out to be way too time consuming.  After about a week, I stopped using it, and I resorted to a really lazy method.  If a student was absent, they would need to come see me at an appropriate time and ask for what they had missed.  This works okay *if* I can locate the papers they need in the mess that I call my desk, *if* they remember to come ask for them, and *if* students understand what constitutes an appropriate time to ask.  That is way too many "ifs."

Absent Work Form "Today, You Missed..."

This year, I'm trying something new.  We're not even a month into school yet, so I don't know that this works in the long run, but this new system is definitely working better than last year's system!  On my cabinet, I have a hanging file box that says "Absent?  Look here!"  The first hanging file has a half-page form that I fill out for each student who was absent that day.  I write their name, the date, and check off whatever they missed that day.  If there are any handouts, I staple them to the back of the form.  Since the amount of writing I have to do is minimized, I can get these done in a very small amount of time at the end of the day.  Instead of dreading this end of day task, I actually look forward to it because it's one of the easiest things to mark off my to-do list!    

When students come to me and say they were absent, all I have to do is point to the box.  I can also easily check and see what students are not picking up the assignments they missed.  If you are interested in the form I use, I have embedded it for your below to download!