Morning Meeting Attendance

The Investigations Math Curriculum for 1st grade has a variety of "Classroom Routines" which rotate throughout the week and provide critical thinking and basic skills practice.  One of these routines is taking attendance.  Although I learned early on in teaching that I should fill out the attendance record while the kiddos did Morning Work, I still have the kiddos "take attendance" each morning because it gives us an opportunity to practice counting strategies.

In the beginning of the year, I led the attendance count by suggesting ways of keeping track of our count.  By now, the kiddos are leading most of Morning Meeting and our Attendance Counter has the job of leading this part.  I encourage the Attendance Counter to think of a new way to count the class each day (kiddos hold their job for the one week).  Sometimes everyone starts standing and sits down after being counted, sometimes each kiddo stands as he is counted, sometimes just the first person counted stands to mark the beginning of the count.  We are also starting to try more sophisticated ways of counting, such as making pairs and counting by 2s or making groups of 5 and counting by 5s.


After the Attendance Counter shares how many kiddos are present, we record it on the SMART Board. At first I recorded how many kids were present and absent by using cubes.  We started with a tower of 23 cubes (the total number of kiddos in our class); then we counted out how many were present, and discovered that the remaining cubes represented the absent ones.  For the past month, we have been writing an addition equation to show the attendance:  Here + Absent = Total.   Sometimes the number Absent is quick and easy to calculate (for instance when everyone is present), but I've also been able to suggest counting on from the number present.  Today we tried to create a subtraction equation as well.  We talked about what each number in the equation would represent in order for the equation to be true.

Although we have done the same routine for months, adding new ways of counting and recording the attendance keeps the practice fresh and encourages critical thinking. I can really see the progress as we get better at understanding numbers and what they mean.