Part of what has been keeping me so busy lately is trying to figure out the "procedures" that I want to use in my first classroom. While student teaching, I pretty much kept a lot of procedures that my cooperating teachers already had in place because the students were already used to it. I've been trying to think of as many "What-ifs" as I can, so that I can present my classroom "Rules and Procedures" at the beginning of the year.
So, I asked myself, "What if a student is absent?" One of my pet peeves during student teaching was when students would come up to me in the middle of class with an absence slip and expect me to stop class and sign their slip. So, here is my proactive approach to cut down on those interruptions. Now, KEEP IN MIND that I will still encourage students to come to me so that we can discuss what they missed before or after class, but they will be able to quickly get the information they need from the class they missed by just going straight to the Absence Box!
Since I will be teaching Language Arts to all the middle grades (5,6,7, and 8) I put tabs on the calendars as well as the files so that students can find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Behind the front "Were You Absent?" sign, there is a calendar for each grade that will have information for each day of the week. After students check the calendar, they can then go to that day's file and grab any handouts or worksheets that were passed out from the day they were absent.
Here is a top view of the box, with the big tabs for each grade and the smaller tabs for each day of the week.
There ya have it. What are your procedures for absences?
Best,
Ms. M
"If
you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on
their shoulders." Abigail Van Buren
I love this idea. I was planning to do the same thing but in a binder (one binder for each class instead). This seems a bit easier, though. I may have to switch over.
ReplyDelete-Jade