Transitions in the Art Room: Attendance

The second transition in most art classes is attendance. Ideally, this transition should take less than 3 minutes. A quick glance at your seating chart and a look at your empty seats will tell you who's not present for class that day. Sigh...if things were only that simple, right?

There is a LOT of work behind keeping this a simple, quick task! My routine included my book of class lists and my book of seating charts along with a mechanical pencil - always sharp and an eraser attached so I never lose it. I buy one of those pack of 24 or 36 mechanical pencils at back-to-school sales every fall. Usually, I still could find at least one to use by May and I found about half of the rest during my end-of-year 'pitch or organize' cleansing rituals.

In the Elementary schools (it's a zoo!), you will deal with many things besides just whether a kid is absent. Juan has Speech and always arrives 10 min. into the class period, Abigail, Alyssa, and Sam have math intervention and have to leave 10 min. early, Ryan needs to take his meds every day at 10 am, etc, etc. I used a couple of methods to keep track of this craziness: sticky notes on the class list page for temporary things or written in my shorthand next to student's name for year-long events (meds, speech, etc). I had 30 different groups in a week's time and some of you have even more. Save your brain space for your creative lessons and WRITE IT DOWN if it will affect your attendance record! This info comes in very handy at report card time.

Some of my colleagues combine class list and seating charts - whatever floats your boat. This is an important transition so use a system that allows you to quickly learn who's present and who's not! When it's time for report cards, you'll be able to tell at a glance why Alberto never completed any assignments (always left early for Intervention) or why Athena finished her work but rarely followed directions (frequently tardy & missed direct instruction).

Final note about Attendance: Do this before any instruction begins. Before they announce a lock down and you can't remember if anybody left for the restroom. Before there's a surprise fire drill and your kinders run out the wrong direction, screaming. Before the office calls asking to send Kevin up to talk to the Principal. Take attendance first thing so you know who's present and who is not!

What helps you streamline your attendance-taking?

If you missed my last post on the transition of Meet and Greet you can read it here along with the transitions I'll be writing about next.

Class lists for the Artroom

So let's pretend that I have had all of my Special Needs lists returned (all but 2 at last count). Now I need to enter that info onto my class lists for daily reference.

I use my class lists for grades, attendance and behavior incidents. In addition, my lists include the class code, teacher's name, classroom number and the phone extension for that room.

Here's an example of one of my 4th grade lists:

In the upper left hand corner is:
class code
Teacher name
room #
Ph #

Student names are listed on left hand side. That vast wasteland of empty cells in the spreadsheet will soon be filled with attendance, grade and behavior notations. Dates of class and descriptions of art projects are written at the top of each column.

Now you've probably noticed all the fancy schmancy colors & patterns going on in the student name column so let me explain...it's not just there for decoration (although I may tell the kids that if they go snooping!).

I use different colored fonts to designate different needs of students. This particular class is an SEI group (Structured English Immersion). Students in this room are still learning English - English skills can range from monolingual (Spanish), Pre-emergent, Emergent to Intermediate. Student names in this class are in a medium blue font with the exception of those who are monolingual (dark blue), those who receive Resource or Speech services (violet) or Non-reader (red font).

Several of these students have been identified as far below grade level and are given specific interventions to improve their learning. If there is no improvement over 60 days, they will be tested for SPED. I've designated them by highlighting their name space with pink. For students who are both SPED and non-readers, their name is violet and the background is a red diagonal pattern.

The numbered spaces to the left of names denote medical needs. I use red for allergies (food, bees,etc.), asthma, ADHD w/Rx or any other condition stated on the Special Needs list. Yellow means they may use the restroom as needed per nurse's direction. The specifics of the 'red' condition are written on the sheet directly under this one for easy reference...

This second example is from one of my Gifted Cluster classes - we have one of these designated at each grade level, K - 5. The gifted students in these groups receive services from a certified Gifted teacher who travels to our site once a week.

Gifted student names are in a green font. One of these students also receives Speech services so there is a violet diagonal line pattern in the name space as well. You'll see several kids that are highlighted in pink again because there is quite the range of abilities in these rooms. Something to keep in mind when I'm planning lessons...

Before the days of affordable color printers, colored pencils and highlighter markers were always at my side! Printing in color is a real timesaver but even coloring by hand paid off in the end.

Although this may seem like a lot of work (and it is - initially), the results are well worth it. A quick look through my lists every morning remind me of the learning needs of each of my groups that day which leads to far more successful lessons with each set of learners...

Class Lists

It's that special time of year...There's nothing like a fresh, clean class list to start off the New Year...no absences yet, no sad goodbyes to those students who have been crossed out because they moved away, no new students scribbled in at the bottom of the alphabetized list, no behavior record of those that drive you crazy, no assessment grades yet - just a clean spreadsheet with so much potential!!

I spent some time yesterday updating my class lists. Now all 29 lists are finished & assembled in the grand BOOK OF CLASS LISTS. Thank goodness for technology - it only took a few hours!

I gave up using the standard class list book years ago. Too much time spent re-writing the names each quarter (we have a high rate of turnover in our district). Plus there weren't enough pages in one book to cover my all my classes. So now I create my own spreadsheets with daily dividers and assemble them with 2" binder rings.

I have an all-time high number of classes this year - 29. It really helps that nowadays I can download a fairly up-to-date class list pdf from our district online database. Once those are downloaded, I copy and paste into my spreadsheet form.

Each class page includes the class code, teacher name, room number and classroom phone extension number along with the list of student names.

The list of student names is color coded as a quick reminder for each class period of the special needs of my students: purple for resource students, green for gifted, red for non-readers, blue for ESL. This year I have a few students with medical issues (diabetic, vision impaired, and kidney/bladder issues) so those have a designation as well.

My class list book includes for each group: first student list of the year (includes initial 2D assessment, info from the special needs list) as well as grades/attendance records for each quarter. Pages are tabbed on the right side with class code designation. It's about 1 1/2" thick right now - thank goodness we only have one more grading period!