Enter class attendance

As a teacher, you can enter and track attendance for your classes in the Staff view.

Some teachers take daily attendance during a classroom period. For example, your school might not have a homeroom period, and instead uses Period 1 for daily attendance. Period 1 teachers can enter both daily and class attendance at the same time. The class attendance input page displays students' Daily Attendance and Class Attendance codes.

To enter class attendance:

  1. Log on to the Staff view.
  2. Select Attendance > Class.
  3. Select the checkbox next to the class you want to enter attendance for.
  4. On the Class side-tab, click Input. The input page appears.
  1. If this class spans more than one period (and your school has opted to take attendance during each period of a multi-period class in Preferences), select the current period from the Period drop-down.

  2. The page displays the students currently enrolled in the section. Next to each student, the following columns appear:

    • Local Id
    • Name
    • History (Depending on your district's or school's preferences, the Attendance History icon " " appears here if the student had a class attendance record for the day.)
    • Daily Attendance (If the student is absent, tardy, or dismissed that day, the tardy or dismissal times appear.)
    • Class Attendance
    • Code

    Notes: 

    • Click the Field Set icon Field set menu icon. to customize the columns that appear on the list. For example, create a field set that includes YOG for classes with seniors. That way, you can easily identify seniors and will not accidentally mark them absent after they graduate.

    • If one or two students appear on a second page, they could be easy to miss. Consider increasing the Records per page preference so all student records fit on the page.

  1. Do one of the following:
    • If your administrator has set your school or course section to use negative attendance, all students will be marked Present in the Class Attendance column by default. In the Code column, click the appropriate attendance code for students who are not present. If your school wants you to record more information for specific attendance codes, such as tardy, a pop-up prompts you for that information.
    • If your administrator has set your school or course section to use positive attendance, all students will be marked Absent in the Class Attendance column by default. In the Code column, click the appropriate attendance code for students who are not absent. If your school wants you to record more information for specific attendance codes, such as tardy, a pop-up prompts you for that information.
  1. If your school wants you to record more information for specific attendance codes, such as tardy, a pop-up prompts you for that information. Complete the information, and then click OK. If the Override Reason field appears in the pop-up, then an override reason is required. Click Search, and select a code. If you select Other, enter an Activity Comment to describe the reason. Click OK.

    Note: If your school takes second daily attendance, and you need to enter other codes for your attendance records, enter the other code for AM in the first Other codes field (on the left), and the other code for PM in the second Other codes field (on the right) in the Class Attendance pop-up:

    Note: If your course section uses positive attendance:
    • Prior to posting or saving, a message in the page’s top-right section reminds you to mark students present.
    • The P (Present) and A (Absent) codes appear by default.
    Note: When a student's calendar is not in session, the student is grayed out and the daily and class attendance codes appear as "Not in session". This helps prevent teachers from mistakenly marking students absent who are in their homeroom, but on a different calendar from the current day, such as kindergartners or seniors.
    Note: Depending on your school's settings, a Comment column appears on the Input page when you click on an attendance code button or when a class attendance record has already been posted. You can type additional information about the attendance record there. This lets you enter comments in the class attendance record easily, even when the class attendance code button pop-ups are not enabled.
  1. Click one of the following to save the values, depending on the Post mode your district or school sets in the Class Attendance preferences:
    • Post
    • Save
  1. If the appropriate district or school Class Attendance preference is selected, you can also edit these values at any time or on any date. For example, you could type a date from the previous week in the Attendance for field, and edit class attendance for a student from last week.
  1. If this class is the class period during which you enter daily attendance, a pop-up asks you if you want to post the values for daily attendance. The system only asks you this if the following are true:
    • The date you are entering class attendance for is the current date.
    • You have not already posted daily attendance for this class today.
    • This is the period during which you enter daily attendance.

    On the pop-up, click Yes or No to indicate whether you want to post class attendance to daily attendance. Aspen will save the class attendance either way. Then click Post.

  1. Notes:

    • Office staff can see class attendance in the School view.
    • To quickly access your Scores page for this section, click the Scores page icon " " in the Class Attendance breadcrumbs.
    • You can hover your cursor over a code in the Attendance columns to see a description of the attendance code(s).
    • Depending on your district's or school's preferences, the Attendance History icon" " might appear in the History column. This icon indicates that the student had a class attendance record for the day. Click the icon to see a list of attendance activities in the Attendance History pop-up. If the icon is red, the attendance buttons are disabled, and you cannot edit the attendance record.