School Absence Note Template: Fill & Download for Free

Update 10/2015: For whatever reason, this answer has picked up a lot of traction. If you're a media outlet looking to post this in some way, please connect with me or Quora first, as it's marked "not for reproduction" to maintain some of its integrity. Responses to this answer over the last few years have been really fun, if not over-dramatic. My answer to this question was published last year on Mashable, and as a result I got all types of feedback -- both negative and positive. Time has passed and I've changed some of my perspectives here and there or further explained the logic with more examples and practical application. It felt like a good time to update my answer to this question so I did! Thanks, friends. Carry on.I think this varies from recruiter to recruiter and also depends on the role for which you're applying. For one, I don't look through stacks of resumes anymore. I hate paper. I do everything online.There has been for many decades, some mysterious "wizard of oz" type viewpoint of the recruiting world that I think is somewhat misappropriated. People seem to be truly fascinated by what goes on behind the curtain, when in reality, recruiters aren't running the covert operation many think we do. Our world is a lot simpler than you think. "Does this candidate seem like they stand a chance of being a good match for this role? If yes, proceed to next step. If no, reject." Each recruiter is different, so there's no one way to answer this question. But I'll highlight briefly (actually, not so briefly) how I personally absorb a resume. I should preface this by saying that currently I primarily recruit for senior-level software engineers. In my past life I recruited for PMs, MBAs, Finance, Sales, and pretty much all of it. Everything I'm about to say broadly applies to all of these fields. I also was a campus recruiter, and you read resumes of new grads a bit differently since experience is less meaty. So for non new grads, here's how it goes in my brain:Most recent role - I'm generally trying to figure out what this person's current status is, and why/if they might even be interested in a new role. Have they only been in their last position for 3 months? If so, probably not the best time for me to reach out, right? Unless they work for Zynga, or somewhere tragic like that (said with great respect for Farmville...the app that put Facebook apps on the map). If it's an incoming resume, I'm wondering why the candidate is looking now. Are they laid off? Did they get fired? Have they only been in their role for a few months and they're possibly hating it? But most importantly, is their most recent experience relevant to the position for which I'm hiring?Company recognition - Not even gonna lie. I am a company snob. Now don't get all Judgy Mcjudgerson about my judgy-ness. Hear me out. It's not even that I think certain companies are better than others (although some most certainly are). It's purely a matter of how quickly can I assign a frame of reference. This is also known as "credibility." Oh you worked at Amazon? Then you're probably accustomed to working on projects at scale. You're at a well known crash and burn start up? You have probably worn many hats and have been running at a sprinter's pace. There are some pretty blatant if/then associations I can make simply by recognizing a company name. Because recruiters have generally been doing this job for awhile, we notice patterns and trends among candidates from certain companies and we formulate assumptions as a result. There are edge cases and our assumptions can fail us, but again, this is a resume review -- we're talking a less than 20-second analysis. Assigning frame of reference is often more difficult to do when a candidate has only worked for obscure companies I've never heard of. When I can't assign company recognition, it just means I have to read the resume a little deeper, which usually isn't an issue, unless it's poorly formatted, poorly written, uninformative and wrought with spelling errors, in which case...you might have lost my interest. See? That's tragic. Keep it tight, folks.Overall experience - Is there a career progression? Does the person have increasing levels of responsibility? Do the titles make sense? (You're a VP of Marketing for a 5 person company? Heck, I would be too.) Do the responsibilities listed therein match what I'm looking for?Keyword search - Does the person have the specific experience for the role I'm hiring for? There have been times when I command + F the crap out of resumes. Especially the long ones that are hard to follow. This isn't fool proof, but if I'm looking for an iOS Engineer, for example, and the words "iOS" or "Objective-C" don't even make a cameo appearance in someone's resume, I have to furrow my brow, read a little deeper and figure out what the heck is going on. Throughout my career supporting hiring for different profiles, I've done this on many occasions searching for things like Ruby on Rails, Mule, Javascript, and seriously, anything you can think of. Now if you're thinking you should "key word" it up on your resume, think again. Keep it authentic. And don't you dare think of putting your resume on the Internet and imbedding 250 completely irrelevant to your skill set key words at the bottom in 5pt white text so no one can see. I'm on to you. But I do think you should be vigilant to ensure that the actual important key words contained in the meat of your experience are represented on your resume.Gaps - I don't mind gaps so long as there's a sufficient explanation. Oh you took 3 years off to raise your children? Fine by me, and might I add: #respect. You tried your hand at starting your own company and failed miserably? Very impressive! Gap sufficiently explained. Whatever it is, just say it. It's the absence of an explanation that sometimes makes me wonder. Still, I understand that sometimes people feel uncomfortable sharing certain things in a professional context. If you had a gap, surely you were busy doing something during that time, right? Get creatively honest and just name that period of your life in a way that shows you acknowledge that it might raise an eyebrow.Personal online footprint -- This is not required. But if you have an online footprint, and you've bothered to include it in your resume, I'm gonna click. This includes personal domains, Quora profiles, Twitter handles, GitHub contributions, Dribbble accounts, or anything a candidate has chosen to list. Two out of three times, I almost always click through to a candidate's website or twitter account. It's one of my favorite parts of recruiting. You never know what you're gonna get.General logistics -- Location, Eligibility to work in the US -- I try to make some raw guesses here, but this is not a place of weeding someone out, more just trying to figure out their story.Overall organization -- This includes spelling, grammar, ease of use, ability to clearly present ideas. If you're in marketing and you've lost me in the first three bullets, I have concerns.Total time it takes me to do all of above: < 25 seconds*Note: I will likely later read the resume far more in depth, but only if I already know I like the candidate. It takes me way less than a minute to fully digest a resume and flag that person for follow up. I read a resume pretty thoroughly once I know I will be speaking to that person on the phone or reaching out via email. But I will not thoroughly read a resume of someone who did not pass the above categories. Maybe that makes me a heartless corporate recruiter, but I'm just keeping it real, folks. Recruiters move quickly. I'm trying to remove the barrier for people who might struggle with getting their resume properly acknowledged.Things I rarely pay as much attention to:Education -- Believe it or not, this is more an after thought for me in a resume and certainly not the most relevant element by a long shot. There have been times in my career where I could go a month reviewing hundreds of resumes and not recall looking at that section even once. Peeps, our college career center counselors lied to us. However, I will say that as a university recruiter, I almost always looked at education first. But that's because experience is often lacking with new graduates. But if you are not a new graduate, experience is king, my friends. I can think of a few exceptions where perhaps a hiring manager wanted a certain pedigree (Wharton or HBS MBA, for example), but even that's being de-prioritized less and less I find. I will also add that this changes drastically by industry and company. I currently work in tech, but I've also worked in management consulting and education is huge in consulting. I'll also add that some tech companies care more about education than others -- for example, Facebook definitely more heavily favors engineering candidates who have demonstrated core CS fundamentals by obtaining a computer science degree. Some recruiters even narrow the field and look for candidates with computer science degrees from top 25 schools. Even still, Facebook employs many engineers who never finished college. Experience rules the school.Fancy Formatting -- There are exceptions here. I say this with the caveat that I LOVE a creatively formatted resume. LOVE. However, no amount of fancy formatting is going to make up for a lack of experience. So reign it in. Also, it's important to keep in mind that if you're applying to a position online, whether it's a PDF or not, many companies' applicant tracking systems parse your resume for information and convert it to pure text as the most immediate viewing format. Recruiters don't often see how awesome your resume is. The original file is usually there for us, but many recruiters aren't clicking through to that. If you're going to do something fun with your resume, I recommend keeping it PDF and also be sure it converts to text fairly cleanly so it doesn't come through our system looking wonky. Or just email it to an actual person.Uncomfortably personal details -- In Europe for example, I've noted that it's very common to list things like family status, citizenship, and sometimes even weight and height on CVs. Often it's common to even include a photo. The US is a bit different, and by different I mean very litigious. Many employers are trying to avoid any type of discrimination, so often seeing that stuff on a resume can make recruiters feel uncomfortable. We just want to know about things that pertain to your work history. So please take your photo off your resume. If we want to see what you look like, recruiters can just stalk you on LinkedIn.Cover letters -- There is a debate on this, but I'm sorry, I don't read cover letters. I want to see the resume. Most of my recruiting colleagues agree, but I know there are still recruiters that do love and value cover letters. I find that a lot of candidates don't even send them anymore (Hallelujah). Cover letters are sort of a throwback to a different era - an era where you actually sent your resume snail mail. If you're going to send one, that puppy better be darn good. I'm of the mind that most companies that request cover letters only do so to weed out the people who haven't bothered to read the directions. But if you're in marketing or sales, etc., I can see the cover letter as a strong component of someone's potential candidacy. But seriously...ugh with cover letters.Things I wish more people would do:Bring personality into the resume -- We recruiters are staring at these missives all day long. Throw a joke in there somewhere for goodness' sake. Very few of us are curing cancer. We should lighten up a bit. Know your industry, of course. An easter egg buried in a resume may not go over well if you're in a very buttoned up industry. I think it's important to keep the work experience details as professional as possible, but trust me, there are ways to have fun with it. I love an easter egg buried in a resume. And I absolutely LIVE for creatively written LinkedIn profiles. For example, this guy is boss. I have emailed his LinkedIn profile around to dozens of friends and co-workers over the years. It's that epic. So well done and tells a great story. Best read starting from the very bottom and working your way up to the top. But he knows his industry. Probably not a good play to talk about marijuana in your LinkedIn profile if you're gunning for Director of Communications for Bank of America.Include URLs for online footprints -- Nuff said. And within your comfortability of course. I get it. We've overshared our way to a more private society, but if you're looking to stand out, write some stuff on the Internet. Contribute to open source repositories. Demonstrate some level of domain expertise/interest outside of your 9-5.List key personal projects -- I ask this in almost every phone interview I do. "What kind of stuff are you working on in your free time?" I am always inspired by this. Also shows me that you have passion for your industry.Things I wish people would stop doing:Using MS Word's resume templates -- Period. Oh my gosh. Please, let's kill them all. Especially that one with the double horizontal lines above and beneath the candidate name.Writing resumes in first person -- Exceptions made for people who do it cleverly. If no one has ever told you you're clever, then you're probably not that clever. Don't do it. It reads oddly.Allowing their resume to be a ridiculous number of pages -- Unless you are a tenured college professor nobel laureate with multiple published works, you do not need an 8+ page resume. That is not impressive; that is obnoxious. Also, I do not care that you worked at Burger King in 1988. I mean, good for you, but no; not relevant.Mixing up first person and third person or present tense and past tense -- Pick a voice, pick a tense, and then stick with it. I suggest third person and past tense. If I were you, I'd eliminate pronouns (e.g. My, I, She, He) from your resume altogether. Instead of writing "I helped increase overall sales by 300% by breeding rabbits in my garage," Simply eliminate the "I" in that sentence. So, "Helped increase overall sales...blah blah blah." Go through your resume and remove all the pronouns and rewrite the sentence to make it sound like a bullet point. By "past tense" I mean that your resume should always be voiced from the perspective of something you already did -- not something you're currently doing. So even if you're in your current position, you should still list those accomplishments in the past tense.Listing an objective at the top of the resume -- Dude, seriously? This isn't 1992.Mailing, faxing, or hand-delivering paper resumes -- Immediate disqualification. Do not pass go. Go straight to jail. While I have your attention though, let's camp out on that last point for a moment: Hand-delivering paper resumes. Look, I get it. People are trying to stand out. It can be tough out there. And I completely respect the hustle. But in 2015, HR professionals are swamped, anxious, and jumpy. When a random stranger shows up unannounced asking to speak to someone in HR or recruiting, we're wondering if you have a gun and a vendetta, and we've probably alerted security. Seriously. It's really creepy. It's also not really how the corporate world works any more, and oftentimes it can place an undue burden on people to rearrange their schedule to make time to talk to you...which makes them grumpy...which doesn't exactly put you in a good spot as a potential candidate. So seriously, folks. Think long and hard before you decide to randomly show up at a company's headquarters with your resume. It might have a huge pay off, but it probably won't.Sending resumes addressed to the CEO that end up on some random recruiter's desk unopened - This is a gross generalization here and exceptions are made for smaller companies, but um, CEOs don't often read resumes -- not the first pass. Also see above re: paper resumes. P.S. We sometimes laugh at people who do this. (All of the above does not apply if you're Tristan Walker or exude ridiculous amounts of awesomeness)Exaggerating titles and responsibilities -- Eventually the truth comes out.There you have it. Thirty seconds in the brain of one lowly recruiter. I hope this helps make someone better or more effective in their job search. If you take issue with anything I've said here, you're well within your right. Recruiters are paid to be judgmental sharp shooters. We fail often and we miss out on really good candidates. This is one recruiter's opinion. I am nothing if not honest.Happy hunting.

I first starting cutting school in sixth grade. After going to my great-grandfather’s funeral, I started cutting school at a rate of nearly every other day.Apparently there used to be a template for creating classrooms back in the 80’s in my area that grouped kids by intelligence overall. They’d put say, in one class: 85% of the most difficult learners in the same class, with 10% of the average learners, and then a random assortment with a few of the most eager and intelligent students. The opposite template, 85% of the most eager and intelligent students, etc, were placed in another class; etc. In fifth grade, I was to be one of the students in the first template, one of the ones to show the way, lead the others, inspire. I had LOVED school until this point, but when placed in this class in fifth grade, I went home weeping daily. September was spent doing memorization and busywork while the teachers worked with the others. But before September was over, I was placed in the class with the majority of [societally deemed] strongest learners. I thrived. I was happy again. I had two best friends — popular kids even — and was one of the top three in that elementary class.Sixth grade though? Mornings throwing up from stress, days going to school and missing my friendships -while- at school, wondering what I had done wrong to lose the people I was surrounded by: I felt as lost and alone as I had been on that summer day that I was in Vestal on Tracy Creek Road, an hour away from my Grandparents, in the ‘care’ of the rapist for two weeks and ..and I can only describe the walk on the road as…looking for my SOUL...highly intelligent uneducated…Am I either? Am I truly both? Certainly there is judgement in the latter…Heck, I’m not even sure at this point that I can put a coherent or cohesive answer to the question together.In January 2014 I met with my disability lawyer who needed to hear my story in order to represent me. I was shaking the whole time. He had to push to get actual details, but when I told him, in …normal conversation.. “the rape between fifth and sixth grade was the one that broke me. It was the last one I experienced, and not a ‘bad’ one, but after six hundred—-”“SIX HUNDRED??” he shouted, “HOW THE HELL IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?And the friend sitting with me, who had already known me and much of my life story for the past 20+ years just gave emotional support as we had to move on without me being able to answer the lawyer’s emotional outburst borne of lack of understanding, wisdom, or empathy.I loved school. My brother, three years older than me and like the classic older brother, teased me near-relentless, and one of his favorites terms for me was “school-head”. I LOVED homework. I loved more than just books and reading and my own thing, but I loved being near anything related to school …to be blunt like my disability lawyer pressed me to do well, school was a place that I never experienced a rape. School was a safe place. The 70’s and 80’s didn’t use that specific phrase, but that’s what it was: safe.And in sixth grade, I just could not participate in basic life without breaks of not going to school (my safe place!). My emotions, my mind itself, could not handle it — I am guessing that had I obeyed (the law?) and gone to school, I would have been in a situation in which I would have been institutionalized without a diagnosis and with a terrible amount of toxic, mind-killing medications. Institutions are not great now, but back then it was still pre-Reagan era de-institutionalization (the ‘treat em and street em’ he created). I may have been in for a short 1/2-life of a sentence, then radioactive punishment later in ways that would have led to a quick death. I know. I’ve had a brief stint with the institution and many with death (see meeting with disability lawyer), and know myself enough to know I could not have kept surviving under those conditions. I barely could survive under the conditions given to me.I was an highly obedient kid up until that point and not going to school hurt me on so many levels that would take many more essays to begin to describe. I wasn’t doing something frivolous; I was doing something *necessary*. I was surviving.My sixth grade teacher was actually quite good looking — something of a ‘Magnum, PI’ doppleganger, but better. I feared him. I adored him. And though he didn’t work with the police to put a “PINS” or any other stigma on me — though the foster care system was potentially better… what he did on one particular day changed my life: (again, difficult to describe) while he was showing me in the school hallway that he’d like me to re-write my “Who Am I?” essay over in order to put it on the wall with the other kids’ writings, he put his left hand gently on my left shoulder and explained to me that I needed to go to the gifted classes on Thursdays. I remember looking at his light brown leather shoes as he talked. He asked me to look at him. And then, before we started walking to this weekly class, he renamed me.At birth I was given the name Anna Jean. Born in the south, in the belt buckle of the Bible belt, to a parent in fact going to seminary, I had to get a name like that. But when my mother fled my father and returned to Long Island to live with her parents, my Gram took my middle name, and asserted to my mother and everyone, law of the Medes and the Persions, that my name was and evermore should be Jeannie. But that fall day in 1981, Mr. Muldoon, handsome man of manic energy, took my name one step further. With godlike assertion, he proclaimed my name as Jeanius. I have no idea how my classmates felt about this, but he proclaimed this name in front of everyone at random times. The word, the speaking of the name, the tone that he pronounced who I [was]: it was magical and transformative. But you have to know that one name change does not cover all that happened before and after meeting him.Mr. Muldoon proclaimed this name “Jeanius!” with joy whenever I visited him in years to follow. On the hard days, he’d recognize in my demeanor that I’d cut school — and I still needed to on a nearly every-other-day basis sometimes.Did I deserve the name or the placement into the gifted class? I mean, there are stories I could tell of my special gifting in intelligence which, up until a severe change in 2008, was my near eidetic memory. But people like numbers. The educational elite who I come into regular contact with want to know what school I went to, what letters are after my name, and, had I joined Mensa when I could have, clearly I would have had to put forth those magic numbers: IQ. Mr. Muldoon actually tested me a few times. Most of those times I was severely anxious and he couldn’t get a consistent score out of me. The better times though varied between 136 and 151. There. You all have an historical number.Uneducated? I was bounced back and forth between ‘regulars’ and ‘honors’ classes all through middle and high school. Yet I did actually finish high school, and with a regents diploma. I think passing was mainly because of my ability to record conversation, so that, whatever lectures I had attended, I could just ‘look up’ in my head, and whatever readings I had spent time on, I could do the same. I didn’t have mental or emotional capacity to live through what I was surviving AND think of most things regarding school though. I had to re-take gym because of the absences, and science labs were my downfall. But somehow I did graduate. So maybe I don’t qualify for the question~?And after high school I desperately wanted education, but my mother fought it: for one, apparently it was a female’s destiny to become a wife and mother, and two, when I applied to schools, she refused to sign any permissions, most importantly for financial aid, without which, made school impossible. The signature itself was a legal requirement, let alone that even after saving $5k from working near full-time in school, I couldn’t afford it. If I forged her signature to go to school (which I never did for an absent note during public school), I feared the law. So I waited until I was ‘of age’ as an independent according to NYS, and at 21 went to an upstate NY community college. To me… it was painfully easier than regulars classes. I was there though, and two years of schooling could get me in the door to a 4-year-degree program.I didn’t. I have not yet. My story is not finished. It has more hardship involved, I’m 47, and I’m still trying.………When I first saw this question, I thought it was a troll-post. But then I saw that over a hundred people had reasonable and logical responses. As I read the answers, I connected too much to so much of my despondency regarding being different, not fitting in, not meeting my potential and not being lovable.It *feels like* someone asking, “So hey, do any of you all know a black person? Can you tell me what it’s like to be one by your knowledge of one?” It feels like how I think that *might* feel… It feels like someone is looking at me as something …different in a disturbing and unnatural way.*What are________people like?* Okay. I experienced being highly intelligent and uneducated during my growing up years. This is my question. I read it and it resonates with my life-pain and my experience. I am ‘those people’. We’ve divided the us-them and I have felt this divide with the raw pain that I felt with that 1981 rape. There are the Haves. There are the Have Nots. And what the question is asking is, …how can you be born as a “Have” and live as a “Have Not”.I recently took one of those, “are you privileged?” questionaires and my number came out 22. I was shocked. I didn’t think it was possible to come out so low without dark skin and I’m very white.I’m going to ask you to read what little of a glimpse I’ve given you into my life as a person living in a world that I look externally like a Have (less so now that I am not athletic looking and not able-bodied), and I’m going to ask you to use empathy in order to answer your own question — and to live life with new vision and empathy in your life overall. What do -you- think it is like for a person with high intelligence, great curiosity and hunger for learning, desperate to use all of the hunger for too many passions: music, literature and art most of all? What do you think it was like to have a desire to paint, to create, to make art, and to feel this in a soul in the way that dogs thirst for water on hot summer days? What do you think it may have been like to have something like an inborn desire to compose music, have no words to express that at age three and not understand what to do about it as a teenager in her world of not knowing whether the stepfather will kill everyone? What do you think it was like to want desperately to become a writer and have my words stolen from me — AFTER I lost my eidetic memory — by someone who received tens of thousands of emails from me which were my writings? I told my Gram that I wanted to be a writer when I was five years old. Now I’m not sure what I have left: my body has fallen apart from what is likely a response to long-term trauma: multiple autoimmune diseases and other chronic medical problems. My brain now has suffered injury.What is this kind of person like? Many people speak of the negatives of early trauma — what, for example, those rapes do to a child. You are asking and I am telling of a person who does not get to use innate ability. What is she like? Though she’s not at all on the autistic spectrum like her beloved children, she finds it physically difficult to tell lies (as that cohort does). If she tried, she would find it just as physically, not just mentally & emotionally, difficult to hurt another person or animal. She’s generally shy with outbursts of loud joy. She’s a lover of nature and has two companion goats (those are just for friendship, not milking or eating). She keeps trying to create or re-create some kind of stability to overcome the trauma and make a consistent outlet for the things that feed her spirit, soul, body: MUSIC, art, all sorts of words. Gardens! — flowers, herbs, vegetables, TREEES! She was a tree-climber and is nowa tree-planter. She’s a person who stays up late asking questions of the universe, and answering Quora questions once in a great while. She still hopes to climb the ADK’s and become a summer 46′er, and keeps attempting to make ways physically to accomplish this. She wakes up, takes her synthroid, tests her blood sugar and evaluates what is possible for the day ahead. She keeps making lists of books to read and keeps trying to focus on reading when there aren’t medical troubles, confusion, flashbacks, or general life interferences. She hugs her kids and is incredibly happy to be a Mom (she hopes to find her collection of words from the man who stole from her and put together the book of essays about parenting which she’s going to title, “Elbows off the Table Sandwich off Your Head”). She’s a person seeking joy and purpose while carrying life long grief and loss. I am this person. I am open to you getting to know me. Ask me what you will.I am not absent.I am here.I am fucking still here. I am here.Tell Mr. Muldoon I finally re-did that “Who Am I?” essay, probably more to his liking.……..(and I want to be a writer; give me another question)Edit: I also mark myself as graduating with a BA from my chosen college by 2024 because that is my dream and my goal. I need to re-enroll and work at it a course at a time again.

I have a template MS Word doc that I print onto college-ruled loose leaf paper. Each day gets a page. I added an image of the word doc below, and—section by section—here’s how I write daily notes on it.DATE. Only need month & day since I print school year on the template.M/T/W/Th/F. Circle the day of the week.DAY#. First day of school is 001. The last day will be 180, more or less. Makes tracking my progress through my plans very easy. (“Hmm, Quiz 7 on day 79, what day did I give it last year? 86? So going a little slower this year…” kind of thing.)4Q (4/9–6/12). This template was for the 4th quarter, which started on April 9 and ended on the last day of school, June 12.Reminder to take attendance at the start of each class, something I’ve always had a tough time remembering to do. Admin PREFERS that we enter attendance on the CPU at the start of each period, and I write absent students names down in the class period sections farther down in the bottom half of the sheet (in SY ‘17–’18 I had 1st period planning as you can see) Many days I’ll simply transfer the written attendance onto the CPU at end of the day. This end-of-day transfer ensures that if a student is tardy the name will be entered as tardy and not as absent, then forgotten. (NOTE! This handwritten hard copy serves as a back up of my digital attendance; this has SAVED MY BUTT FAR MORE THAN ONCE.)“Of Note:” Anything that might be special about the day. Was it the first day after a break, or the last day before a break? Was there a fire/lockdown/tornado drill? (Note the times here and/or in the class period sections.) Was this the day Janice and Jesse brought pizza in for the entire class? The day Andrew projectile vomited on me from 5′ away? (Both true btw!) Anything at all for which this day should be remembered.JOURNAL. The day’s bellringer. I can be out in the hall monitoring, but the kids already have an assignment the second they enter the room. The Journal question is on the board. They write the question, today’s date and their answer in their Journals (composition notebooks.) After 5–10 minutes (depending on the difficulty of the question) I make the rounds and lay eyes on every single student’s journal every day, even if only for a second or two. The journal grade is reductive (i.e. starts at 100) and is 10% of their quarterly average.) I write the question *as written* and the answer *also as written* on the board, every day (sometimes I just snap a photo) so there’s never any confusion about which journal questions are and aren’t fair game for quizzes and tests.ACTIVITY. Whatever the lesson was that day. Project? Quiz/Test? Bookwork? Study guide? Bingo/Trashketball? (review games!) If it’s a multi-day assignment, the day is noted. (i.e. “day 2 of 4″)CLASS PERIOD SECTIONS. •LEFT SIDE = ATTENDANCE (Tardy? The name that had been written for absence at start of class is now circled, “T1” = excused, “T2” = unexcused w/ time arrived), •RIGHT SIDE = Early dismissals w/ times, and most importantly, hall passes w/ times both leaving and returning.At the end of the year I have a complete log of everything we did and when, anything that would have affected the length of instructional time in a given class period, and ALSO a fully notated set of plans/pacing guides for future years: VERY HANDY, believe me!