Dealing with Student Absences

[I<3Math!]

I am currently have a position as a leave replacement and I'm going crazy trying to keep up with students who are absent. There are a select few who I can count on to be absent at least twice a week. The problem is that when they return to school they have three quizzes to make-up, not including their homework and classwork. No one really stays after school here, and there is not enough time during homeroom for them to make up all their work. Also, I don't want to lose class time for this because then they will fall further behind.

What system do you use to stay on top of absent students and their missing work?

[Ms.SLS]

I keep an online calendar updated with outlines of my lesson plans. I upload any hand outs I used, and I COULD update my power points if I wanted to put in that much effort.

I also keep extra hand-outs of things in a folder taped to my door.

At a certain point, though, it's their responsibility. If they aren't willing to stay after school or come in at lunch to make up a quiz, they'll have to live with a "0."

[mopar]

I always allowed a student to take a quiz during class time, but the homework and classwork were their responsibility.

I kept a wall where I would update missing work by student (or number). It was easy because our on-line gradebook had a section to generate a missing work report. So every week or twice a week, I would post this report to my wall.

Students who were missing work could lose their lunch to stay with me. Sometimes I would plan a fun review day for the students with no missing work while the other students did work that they missed.

[BumbleB]

We keep a "absent work" folder in our room. I pop a few copies of each activity that we do in class into the folder for kids to pick up when they come back.

Absences are a HUGE issue in my district, especially with my students with disabilities. I have one girl who has missed over 30 days of school so far this year () and has about 20 tardies. I would love to have assignments posted online for them, but I work in a very low income district and many kids don't have access to a computer/don't know how to work a computer.

When I asked my SPED director for some ideas to deal with these absences, she said that we should discuss it "as a grade level team"

[dannyboy]

No one is going to live or die from missing homework/classwork, so don't worry about it. Give them their quizzes during lunch time. They don't show, give them a zero.