Raise your hand if you are tired of hearing a mumbled “here” while taking attendance. Instead, maybe you are tired of hearing nothing but crickets. Perhaps you are in the group that constantly forgets to take attendance and are frantically filling it in at the end of the day. Over the past decade of teaching, Sami has fallen into all of these categories. So this year, she began using a new attendance method called “attendance questions.” The goal of attendance questions is twofold: take attendance of who is in class and learn more about students.
Here They Work
- Post a “this or that” question on the board for students to review as they enter the classroom. The choices can be as simple as peanut butter or jelly or a more focused question such as Daisy Buchanan or Jay Gatsby.
- When class begins, remind students to think about their answers and be ready to respond as you take attendance.
- When you go through roll call, instead of each student saying “here” or “present,” they will respond with their answer to the question.
Why They Work
Sami was initially skeptical because the method is used often in elementary and sometimes middle school, but she wasn’t sure if it would be as successful in high school. But it worked! Students started to look forward to the question of the day, and it allowed her to learn more about students. It also encouraged students to be more self-aware, take more risks, speaks up more, and take the initiative in class.
By the end of the school year, students began to take the lead and suggest questions they wanted to answer. So she started collecting questions and using them. It gave a spotlight to students and helped Sami learn more about the interests of her students.
How To Start
While there are many lists of questions on the internet, a great place to start is looking for questions in the current content in your classroom. Sometimes questions can be simple and allow students to share their opinion. Other times the questions can be a great start to a topic for the day. For example, a question could be: exclamation points or question marks? You could ask each student why they prefer one over the other and then lead into a review about how you use each piece of punctuation.
If you’re tired of the mumbled “here’s” when taking attendance, try some attendance questions out!
