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Five Strategies for Improving School Attendance
posted by: Melissa | April 29, 2016, 05:15 PM   

 

School attendance can often feel out of the hands of the classroom teacher.  Attendance is taken in the morning and turned into the office each day but there seems to be little that one can do to affect it.  In some ways, this is true.  There will always be some students absent due to sickness or family emergencies and there is little that a teacher can do.  Teachers also deal with the chronically absent students who suffer from  a lack of self-motivation, or a chaotic family life that de-emphasizes academic achievement.

 

While it may seem that the latter category is also out of the hands of the teacher, this is not the case according to the Australian Society for Evidence Based Teaching.  In fact, there are several small steps that a teacher can take in order to reach those students and improve their attendance rates.  The following five strategies are all relatively easy for teachers to implement without changing much of their routine and are research-based to be among the most impactful when it comes to improving retention.

 

  1. Be passionate. Teachers who get excited about what they teach communicate many things to the students who are in their classes.  They clue students in to the fact that this material is exciting, fun, and engaging.  They show themselves in a positive light and make their classrooms a place where students want to be.
  2. Show students that you care. Both on a group and individual level, when students know that there is someone who cares about how they are doing on a daily basis, they are more likely to come to school.
  3. Hold students accountable and promote high achievement. Part of communicating to students that you care is communicating that their academic work matters.  It’s often easy to give students a pass on work that they miss or make excuses for poor test grades, but by doing this you’re rewarding students for their absences instead of their effort.
  4. Encourage extracurricular activities. Like promoting high achievement, research has shown that students who are involved in clubs and sports are more likely to come to school.  As you’re getting to know that chronically absent student, find out what they’re passionate about and make sure there’s a club at school where they can exercise that passion.
  5. Address classroom management issues swiftly. The last thing you want to do when that absent kid comes to school is to make it a negative experience for them, so too often the tendency is to let small misbehaviors slide.  The problem with this is that it communicates to students that you don’t care about them or their behavior while simultaneously setting the stage for larger issues later on.  Find positive methods to correct students on the small misbehaviors in order to create a caring and positive classroom experience and avoid trips to the principal’s office.

 

Have you ever dealt with a chronically absent student?
Share your stories below!

 

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