Managing Students' Absent Work............... the easy way

Managing Absent Students Work

In my first couple years of teaching I felt like I had a step ahead of everyone else knowing that I wanted to have a plan for students to get missing work when they were absent in my class. Over the years with the help of other teachers I have tweaked the concept of “less work for me when a student is gone” and feel pretty confident in how smoothly things run.

I have a half sheet of paper that has information on it specific for my class and the routines that we do. When I do attendance at the beginning of each hour I take the extra 30 seconds to write each students’ names on each absent slip that are gone. (I do NOT fill out the absent form at this time). By getting their names down by the end of the day I have a neat pile (sometimes large sometimes small) of the students that need missing work.

The next step can be done in two ways. I know as teachers we are always super BUSY during the hour with our students but any spare moments that I have at my desk I work on filling out the form. Trust me filling out the form is WAY less work than telling each individual student that was absent everything they missed and how to do it. The other way you can do this is at the end of the day if you don’t have time. Staple anything relevant to the day behind it.

I have a three ring binder in my room titled, “Mrs. Sauer’s Absent Folder” and inside of binder I have a different colored folder for each hour. Students know when they are absent that they go straight to the folder to see what this missed and if they need further instruction I put “see me” on the absent slip. If students need additional help other than what I gave them I of course make time to help them.

This simple process alleviates so much stress that I would have if I needed to think back to the day before right before class started for each individual student and give them papers for what they missed. I always encourage students that have questions that they can ask, but to do it at the appropriate time.