Absence Folders

My student teaching classroom was hot.  Not we're awesome readers and know all our multiplication facts hot, but boiler room hot.  This meant that every afternoon we were forced to open the windows and turn on a fan.  The noise from the playground didn't annoy me nearly as much as the chaos of papers blowing off of the desks.

I realized that the culprit pages were those of absent students.  All day long my mentor and I had stacked page after page upon the desk and expected  that in a classroom of 28 remaining students, they would still be in a neat pile when the absent student returned.  What were we thinking?  My solution to the problem became an absence folder to be put on the missing student's desk when taking attendance in the morning.

The folder is a simple pocket folder without brads inside.  I had some heavy weight red paper (not cardstock) lying around and decided that it worked well on both the blue and the yellow folders.  I printed onto the red paper, trimmed it to fit, used a glue stick to adhere it, and laminated the folders.  Using a pair of scissors as a knife, I cut the pockets open and was done.  By laminating the folders, I only had to make a handful.  A wet erase marker is used to write the student's name, dates absent, and date due on the cover.  Inside, the pockets are labeled "Practice Work" and "Classwork / Homework To Be Turned In."  By doing this both the student and his or her parents can easily prioritize the pile.

As soon as my personal website is up and running I will have a downloadable template for you to use!  Until then, know that it was typed in Word and you can re-create it very easily!


SNEAK PEEK
Tomorrow's post will be a project I made for my two best friends!  They are coming to visit me tomorrow and I don't want to spoil the surprise so I'll just show you the pretty papers I used.