In the distant past — before SMART Boards and ELMOs became the norm in the classroom — teachers would take attendance by saying each student’s name and waiting for either silence (i.e., indicating the student was absent) or “present!” Say goodbye to the outdated way of taking attendance, and hello to a more advanced (but still kid-friendly) method of knowing which students are in class each day. Thank you to the tech-savvy first grade teacher who introduced this to me.
Using SMART Notebook, the teacher projected an image of a fish bowl and fifteen fish (each with the name of a student in her class) onto the board. It looked similar to the image above. One at a time, students dragged the fish with their name on it into the fish bowl indicating that they were present for the day. While students were diligently completing their morning work, the teacher had the opportunity to take attendance just by looking at her board.
To implement this in your classroom, open your SMART Notebook software and let your creative mind run free! Be sure to include your students’ names and an area on the page that will help distinguish between which students are present and which students are not.
Adaptations
sidenote: I feel like I’m back in lesson planning mode by including adaptations 🙂
For ELMOs or any other projector:
- Create an image using Powerpoint (or any other software that you can create images with) and print it out. Make sure it has your students’ names on it.
- Project it onto your whiteboard for the students to see.
- Have students put a check mark next to their name to show you that they are present.
How do take attendance in your classroom? Let me know in the comments!
Life of A Substitute Teacher 