How Do You Encourage Good Attendance?
Good attendance has always been an area I’ve really enjoyed focusing on in my school counseling program. Most programs focus on students with chronic absences. Attendance can be addressed in small groups or with individual check-ins. September is Attendance Awareness Month, so today, I will be sharing some ideas for encouraging good attendance at your school.
As a school counselor, I have always been a part of the attendance team at my school. The attendance team consists of the school social worker, school psychologist, school counselors, school nurse and our schools data manager. Meetings occur once a month. During this time, the team looks at attendance data and discusses the students with who fall within a specific number of absences. Attendance small groups are typically chosen from the previous year’s data. More intensive interventions are put in place for students who are currently missing a lot of school. This team also works together to create different types of incentives to implement in the school.
Good Attendance Incentives
Good attendance and perfect attendance aren’t the same thing. Although the schools I’ve worked at have recognized students with “Perfect Attendance,” I think it’s important to realize that perfection shouldn’t be the ultimate goal. Students will have legitimate reasons for missing school. School is missed for various reasons such as illness or family emergencies. I believe our overall goal has always been for students to attend school as regularly as possible. As admirable as it is to never miss school, we know there will be some absences. When coming up with your incentive programs, keep that in mind so that most of your students can have the opportunity to receive recognition for their efforts.
Here are some ideas I’ve used with my team OR that I’ve heard about.
- Attendance Madness – This was an idea we used during “March Madness” to encourage good attendance through the week prior to spring break. It can be a two week period where random prizes are given to students who are present in school on a random day or you can even recognize classes who have everyone present. It can be as simple has having a special sign teachers can hang outside their classrooms. With the randomness of the prizes for students, it doesn’t leave out a student who may be have been absent because they were sick the day before.
- NBA (Never Been Absent) – For this, we had a display in the hallway that was divided by grade levels. We used a basketball theme. Each month, we would post the list of students who were in school each day for the month prior. Students received special “tickets” that went toward our PBIS initiative. Because this was updated monthly, “perfect attendance” was not required and everyone started on the same playing field each month.
- Good Attendance is Coming to Town – This is an incentive we used the weeks after the Thanksgiving Holiday leading up to winter break. Like “Attendance Madness,” it was used to encourage students to continue to attend school up until the scheduled break.
- AttenDANCE – This is an incentive I’ve heard about from one of our feeder middle schools. The “dance” would be held each quarter. It was simply a fun time in the gym for a set amount of time for students who had not missed school. Each quarter, there was an opportunity for all students to earn the incentive again.
- Certificates/Coupons (Monthly and Yearly) – We’ve had several restaurants contribute coupons for our students to be used for good attendance. It never hurts to visit the stores and restaurants in your school community to inquire about donations for your attendance program. Of course you can also order certificates, stickers, and pencils to pass out as awards. And, if giving perfect attendance awards is a thing at your school, that’s okay. It is an accomplishment that can be recognized. I would just suggest making sure that students unable to make a “perfect” run have an opportunity during the school year as well.
- Individual Check-ins – These special sessions are reserved for students with chronic absences. In our case, we split the students evenly among our student support services team. The students we focused on had 18 or more absences the previous school year. I created attendance graphs for the students to color in each day they attended school. I put together a folder for the students to hold this form and their attendance data leading up to our sessions. We would also work on and discuss The Attendance Files during their visits. The visits lasted from 15-20 minutes. I used a part of The Attendance Files each time until it was completed.
- Small Groups – I’ve used my School Attendance Pack pretty regularly as well. It has six sessions for attendance small groups. I wrote about it previously in the blog post: School Counseling Group: Attendance Matters.
Attendance Works Website
Attendance Works is a great website that offers TONS of attendance tools and resources that you can use in your program from handouts and letters for families to videos and data tools. There is also an infographic you can print and display in your office as well as other posters and banners. I also follow them on Twitter where they share regularly each day.
I’d love to hear the types of attendance incentives you use in your school counseling program. Do you meet regularly with students who have chronic absences?
Stick around! You can follow Savvy School Counselor with free email updates. You can also follow my TpT Store to keep up with my latest products and freebies. Additionally, I do giveaways through My Facebook Page with my new products. Be sure to like Savvy School Counselor on Facebook and click to receive notifications so you don’t miss them!
One Comment
Pingback: