Resources for Educators
Teaching Tip
From the Teacher’s Aide Newsletter
2019 December
Improve Attendance with Unpredictability
If you have tardiness and attendance issues at your school, you are not alone. Many students have lives that are unmanageable at times, and there is nothing we can do about those things. But we can make it much more enticing to come to our classrooms by being unpredictable. For the students who simply need that added motivation, it may even increase their attendance and decrease their chances of tardiness. Unpredictability can be fun and exciting for you and for your students. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Don’t include your whole lesson plan in your syllabus. Just include topics to be covered that day or week to leave room for unpredictability.
- Use different schedules: Sometimes lecture and discussion before demo and hands-on, sometimes demo and hands-on before lecture and discussion.
- Throw in a pop quiz here and there.
- Go on an unscheduled field trip, or have an unscheduled guest.
- Play fun games at the beginning of class.
When the word gets out that anything can happen in your classroom, students are going to do their best to make it on time.