Gradebook Guide
Chapter 4: Taking Attendance
The Gradebook brings both summative and formative assessment to your students. Get real-time insights into your students’ learning progress to provide the best feedback. Best of all, it’s free for individual teachers.
This learning guide will help familiarize you with the features of the Gradebook. While this guide will cover many of the features available, please refer to our extensive support articles for specific questions or reach out to us at support@chalk.com or through our Live Chat service (available Monday through Friday, 8am-4pm EST).
The following chapter of our learning guide will go over how to:
- Take attendance in the Gradebook
- Export daily attendance and attendance summaries
How do I take attendance?
Taking attendance has never been so easy! If you haven’t already done so, make sure to have your students created and enrolled in your class in the Gradebook and your class scheduled on your Timetable. Once that’s done, you have two places from which you can take your class attendance.
Taking Attendance from the Day Planner
Attendance is integrated right into the Day Planner, making it intuitive and quick to use.
Step 1:
Open the Lessons menu at the top of the page, then click Day Planner.
Step 2:
You will see a button that says Take Today's Attendance button above the sticky note near the top right corner of the page. Clicking it will bring out the attendance sidebar.
Step 3:
When you do that, it will automatically expand out the current scheduled class that you have based on the current time. You will see your classlist appear with a checkmark and X icon next to each student’s name.
Step 4:
From here, simply mark the students that are absent by clicking on the X next to the student’s name. Want to make a note of students that were sick or late? You can add an additional note about a student's attendance.
Once you have finished taking the attendance, it will autosave the information and you can click outside of the sidebar to close it!
To see your class attendance record, open the Gradebook menu at the top of the page, then click Attendance.
Find yourself marking the same student as absent across all classes for the day? Smart Attendance can take care of that for you. Learn how >
From the Gradebook Attendance
Step 1:
Open the Gradebook menu at the top of the page, then click Attendance.
Step 2:
Once you are in Attendance, you will be able to view your class attendance record over a weekly timeframe. You can navigate between your classes by clicking on the class selector dropdown button near the top left. You can also navigate across different weeks by clicking on the left and right arrows or by clicking on the date within the header.
You can also input attendance records for today and previous dates. Click on a cell in the table and click on the X to mark the student as absent.
Note Off-days and future dates' attendance records are not editable.
Once you have finished taking attendance, it will autosave all the information!
Note: If one or more of your classes is missing from the left side of your Attendance page as shown below, this is because you have not yet scheduled the class within the Timetable section of your planner.
Step 1:
When you open the Attendance app, you'll see a list of your classes for the day. Tap on the class for which you wish to take roll.
Step 2:
By default, students are marked as present in the Attendance app. All you have to do is tap on a student's name and and you will be able to mark them absent - it's that easy! You can also swipe from right to left to mark a student as late.
Step 1:
When you open the Attendance app, you'll see a list of your classes for the day. Tap on the class for which you wish to take roll.
Step 2:
By default, students are marked as present in the Attendance app. All you have to do is tap on a student's name and and you will be able to mark them absent - it's that easy! You can also swipe from right to left to mark a student as late.
How do I mark a student late or add a reason for a student's absence?
Was your student absent due to a sickness or late to class? You can easily add these additional attendance notes regarding a student’s absence.
Step 1:
Open the Gradebook menu at the top of the page, then click Attendance.
Step 2:
Click on the label icon that appears next to the check-mark and X icon. A unique dropdown will appear based on whether the student is present or absent.
Step 3:
If you are creating a note about an absent student, the default options will be “sick” or “vacation” and if creating a note about a present student, the default option will be "late". Select whichever applies.
Step 4:
You can create custom notes by clicking on the “Other” option. When you do, a window will appear where you can write your own note, just be sure to keep it within 10 characters!
Swiping
Step 1:
Simply swipe from the right to the left on a student who is currently marked as absent and you will see options to quickly mark them as sick or on vacation. Tap on the appropriate option.
If a student is late, simply keep them marked present and swipe left to mark them as late.
Long Pressing
Step 1:
Simply press and hold on a student to bring up an option to mark them as sick or on vacation.
Custom Reasons
Step 1:
You can swipe the student and tap on the grey Other button, or you can long press on the student and choose Other Reason as shown in the photos above.
Removing a Reason for Absence
Step 1:
To remove the reason for the student's absence, you can either swipe and tap the Remove Reason button, or long press on the student and choose Remove.
Swiping
Step 1:
Simply swipe from the right to the left on a student who is currently marked as absent and you will see options to quickly mark them as sick or on vacation. Tap on the appropriate option.
If a student is late, simply keep them marked present and swipe left to mark them as late.
Long Pressing
Step 1:
Simply press and hold on a student to bring up an option to mark them as sick or on vacation.
Custom Reasons
Step 1:
You can swipe the student and tap on the grey Other button, or you can long press on the student and choose Other Reason as shown in the photos above.
Removing a Reason for Absence
Step 1:
To remove the reason for the student's absence, you can either swipe and tap the Remove Reason button, or long press on the student and choose Remove.
What is Smart Attendance?
Do you find yourself marking the same student absent for each and every class in a day?
Fortunately, you don’t have to do that extra tedious work - Smart Attendance takes care of that for you! Smart Attendance takes the student’s last attendance record from today and carries that forward through any of their remaining classes.
For example, you teach the same group of students multiple classes a day. Today, one of your students, Lisa, showed up to class at the start of the day, but by the second class, she had to go home because she wasn’t feeling too great. When you mark her as absent, with Smart Attendance enabled, the app will record her as being absent from that class onward until her last class for today - saving you the hassle of having to repeatedly mark her absent for each and every one of her remaining classes.
However, if Lisa was to show up for a later scheduled class, you can then mark her as present and she will be recorded as being present for any of her remaining classes for today.
Note: Smart Attendance applies only to the current day's attendance records and does not take effect when you edit any attendance records retroactively.
How do I print my daily attendance and attendance summary?
In Attendance, you have the option of generating a PDF version of ‘Daily Attendance’ and/or Attendance Summary.
Daily Attendance: generates an attendance record of your class over a custom date range.
Attendance Summary: generates a report that includes total number of Absences, Lates and Other reasonings for each category and a total number associated with each reason over a custom date range.
Follow these steps to print a Daily Attendance or an Attendance Summary.
Step 1:
Open the Gradebook menu at the top of the page, then click Attendance.
Step 2:
Click the PDF button on the top right of the screen.
Step 3:
Select Daily Attendance or Attendance Summary.
Step 4:
Select a range: day, week, or custom date range.
Step 5:
Click the Export button once you have finalized all the settings.