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What to do?
What to do?
- Make school attendance a priority
- Talk about the importance of showing up to school every day.
- Help your child maintain healthy daily routines ( you can the use developmental assets to help you build healthy routines: click here or see bellow)
- Lay out clothes and pack backpacks the night before.
- Keep your child healthy and make sure your child has yearly well child check ups and their required shots.
- Introduce your children to their teachers and classmates before school starts.
- Develop backup plans for getting to school if something comes up. Call on a family member, a neighbor or another parent.
- Try to schedule medical appointments, dental appointments, and family trips on days your student doesn't attend class.
- If your child seems anxious about going to school, talk to teachers, school counselors and other parents for advice on how to make your child feel comfortable and excited about learning.
- If your child must stay home due to illness or quarantine, ask the teacher for resources and ideas to continue learning at home. Days home sick are about rest and healing not electronics and unmonitored free choice time.
- Find out if your children feel engaged by their classes, and feel safe from bullies and other threats.
- Make sure your teens are not missing class because of challenges with behavioral issues or school discipline policies. If any of these are problems, contact the school and work with them to find a solution.
- Monitor you teen’s academic progress and seek help from teachers or tutors when necessary. Make sure teachers know how to contact you.
- Stay on top of your child’s social contacts. Peer pressure can lead to skipping school or students without many friends can feel isolated and avoid school. To much or to little socializing isn't good!
- Encourage your child to join meaningful after-school activities, including sports, music, clubs, religion, or community service.
- Notice and support your students if they are showing signs of anxiety. Get support, study's show missing school makes the anxiety worse.
- Communicate with the school
- Know the school’s attendance policy – incentives and penalties.
- Check on your students attendance to be sure absences are not adding up.
- Seek help from school staff, other parents or community agencies if you need support.
Source: Attendance Works
The Importance of Attendance
3 tips for Better Attendance
A pep talk for students
Why school attendance matters and how to improve it!
Why is attendance important?
Why is attendance important?
Missing 10%, or 2 days a month, over the course of the school year, can affect a student’s academic success.
Students should miss no more than 9 days of school each year to stay engaged, successful and on track to graduation.
Students can still fall behind if they miss just 1 or 2 days every few weeks.
Frequent absences can be a sign that a student is losing interest in school, struggling with school work, dealing with a bully or facing some other difficulty.
Being late to school may lead to poor attendance.
Absences and tardiness can affect the whole classroom if the teacher has to slow down learning to help children catch up.
Starting in preschool and kindergarten, too many absences can cause children to fall behind in school.
Missing 10%, or about 2 days each month over the course of a school year, can make it harder for elementary students to learn to read.
By 6th grade, absenteeism is one of three signs that a student may drop out of high school.
By 9th grade, attendance is a better predictor of graduation rates than 8th grade test scores.
Resources
Resources
K-5
K-5
Attending school regularly helps children feel better about school—and themselves. Start building this habit in preschool so they learn right away that going to school on time, every day is important. Eventually good attendance will be a skill that will help them succeed in high school and college.
Resources:
Full remote learning attendance Elementary
*Two way communication between student and teacher is required weekly for full remote students at Home Choice Academy.
School anxiety and what families can do to help
Back to School Anxiety article from Child Mind Institute
School Refusal article from Harvard Medical School
Recommended Therapy's for school avoidance/anxiety
School Anxiety in Children: Causes, Signs, and What to Do
6-8
6-8
Even as children grow older and more independent, families play a key role in making sure students access learning opportunities and understand why attendance is so important for success in school and on the job. Families can also advocate for resources to help students learn if they cannot attend in-person.
Resources:
Middle School Attendance Handout
Full remote learning attendance Middle School
*Two way communication between student and teacher is required weekly for full remote students at Home Choice Academy.
School anxiety and what families can do to help
Back to School Anxiety article from Child Mind Institute
School Refusal article from Harvard Medical School
Recommended Therapy's for school avoidance/anxiety
8 ways to help your middle-schooler connect with other kids
How to help others with school stress
Parenting Tip
Parenting Tip
You control your Childs environment not your Childs Choices. So take everything away until they earn it through a specific behavior (maybe attending school everyday for 2 weeks or helping with family chores for 2 weeks). Have them slowly earn back their wants/ privilege's through commitment to the desired behavioral expectation. sit down with them and make T chart listing their needs and wants. Make is clear to your child that needs like food and your love will always be there for them. They will have what they need. However, if they want anything else they have to earn it by_______________. Until that time you can clear your Childs environment of everything else: toys, doors, electronics, favorite clothes, etc. Don't forget to give them lots words of love and affirmation. This will be a tough transition for them.
What can I do? Help your student build Developmental Assets with healthy regular daily routines!
What can I do? Help your student build Developmental Assets with healthy regular daily routines!
Developmental Assets
Developmental Assets
Build a weekly schedule together! Use pictures and hang it where everyone can see it! Having a regular routine helps kids thrive! teens need to feel empowered so create their schedule with them!
Over time, studies of more than 5 million young people consistently show that the more assets that young people have, the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors and the more likely they are to thrive.
Research shows that students with the most assets are more likely to:
To attend and do well in school
Be civically engaged in their community
Value Diversity
Research also shows these students are the least likely to engage in risky behaviors like:
Drugs and alcohol use
Violence
Sexual activity
Developmental Assets by age:
Family Resources:
Table Time Meal planning for families: Family dinners are important. Research shows that kids in families that frequently eat together tend to get better grades and are less likely to use alcohol, drugs and tobacco. This Family Dinner Toolkit can help you make the time parents and kids spend together count!
Talk About It Cards: Here are some family conversation starters that help you talk with your children and teens and grow your relationships. Talk About It Cards help you share each person’s experiences, feelings, and beliefs so families can get to know each other better!
Source: search institute
Possible schedules from the Children's Center :
*This is a starting point to add in developmental assets like 1 hour of reading to help fosters a commitment to learning or to work on positive identity you could do daily positive affirmations as a family.
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