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.
