Work completion and student absences are a big problem at my school (as I'm sure they are everywhere). It is not uncommon to be missing several students per class period. We have 85 minute classes and are on a A/B schedule, so when students miss two or three classes in a row they are completely lost when they return.
For me, this also creates a problem of letting the students know what they missed when they return. I do post notes and assignments on our school webpage, but I have found that the students who actually check the website are the ones who are always in class. My general policy is that when students are absent they are required to have all notes, homework, and tests/quizzes completed. I do not make them make up bell work and classwork (well, depending on the assignment).
Sometime last year I found this awesome "While you were out" page over at Math=Love. I love the idea but needed to figure out how to make it work in my class. After thinking about it for a long while I decided that I would create While You Were Out binders for each class where students can find out everything they missed while they were absent. The idea is that when a student returns from an absence the first thing they will do is check the binder (instead of ask me) to find out everything we did while they were gone and what they need to do to catch up. I hope to assign a student in each class to update the binders for me every day, but we'll see how that goes.
The general format is the same as Sarah's, I just redid it to fit 3 per page. I, of course, used a ton of fonts making this (due to my font obsession). I also created covers for the binders. I'm sharing the one I made for geometry honors, but can share (or make) others if anyone is interested.
The While You Were Out binders will hopefully help with the absent students and the 10 times a day I hear "Did we do anything last class?" (which I'm still not sure why they even ask me that). As far as students just not turing in assignments, I made a form similar to the one that was just posted at Middle School Math Madness that I am going to have them fill out for every assignment they don't turn in. I have a section where the student will have to explain why they didn't complete the assignment and how it affects their learning and their grade. I hope that they will get tired of filling them out and just start doing their homework.
I hope these help students to complete their assignments. Does anyone already use these or something similar? Has it helped?
I really love your idea for a 'While You Were Out' Binder. Not only does it help make the kids more self-sufficient in finding out what they missed, but having a written log like that will help prevent me as the teacher forgetting to mention that "Oh yeah, we collected that on the day you weren't here..."
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