Attendance questions are one of my favorite daily classroom routines. I love them to help me connect with my secondary students and build stronger relationships. The idea is that every day you post a random question and each student must answer it at the beginning of class to account for their presence. These questions can be personal, content-related, or quick would-you-rather type questions. I usually have the question waiting to students when they enter the room. (See an example of my beginning of class Google Slide below.) The sky is really the limit on the types of questions you can ask. Here are some things I learned while using them as well as some tips for getting started quickly.
The Good
Attendance questions definitely beats the incessant “here” you typically hear after calling each student’s name. The questions helped me get to know my students much faster at the beginning of the year. As we continued throughout the school year, I found that my students actually looked forward to the questions and eventually wanted to create their own. Attendance questions really helped our class get to know each other in a way we wouldn’t have otherwise.
The Bad
First of all, let me address the obvious gripe with this practice – yes, it does take time away from instruction. However, I am a firm believer that instituting positive classroom culture practices improves the time you spend on instruction ten fold. I have found that students are much more willing to work with a teacher they feel cares about them personally. If you want to cut down on the time this process takes because you have a lengthy lesson, I always found that doing a quick either-or question or something that requires a one word answer fixes the issue. You are certainly going to have students who push the envelope with some of their answers just to be silly or show off. I would give an initial warning and then if that didn’t work, I’d temporarily halt attendance questions for the entire class. That usually took care of the issue. If that didn’t work, my plan was to take that as a sign that the class was no longer interested.
The Verdict
I’ll definitely be using attendance questions again this coming school year. Knowing your students is a key ingredient to any successful routine in a classroom. If this isn’t working for some of your classes, don’t worry about stopping the practice. I found that the initial benefit of getting to know my students in the beginning of the year was worth the extra time it took to implement it.
You can certainly use any questions you want when implementing attendance questions, but I do offer a resource with 100 ready-to-use questions that I have used in my own classroom over at my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Click here to view the resource.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on attendance questions. Will you be trying them in your classroom this year?
Happy teaching!
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