Self-contained mode is the most basic attendance mode in SchoolInsight, most often used at elementary schools, where a self-contained group of students stays with the same teacher for most of the day. In this mode, attendance is entered once in the morning, and any changes throughout the day are made by an administrator.
- Self-Contained Attendance Flow Chart
- Instructors Take Period Attendance
- Admins Import Period Attendance
- Admins Manage Daily Attendance
An alternative process is to omit period attendance entirely and for the attendance admins to directly enter all students’ daily attendance. If that is the case for your school, you need not refer to sections two and three.
Self-Contained Attendance Flow Chart
Instructors Take Period Attendance
Under this attendance mode, students will be in exactly one class which takes attendance. This can be any subject but is typically under a non-academic homeroom or “attendance” class. Regardless of attendance mode, teachers take period attendance the same way:
How does an instructor take period attendance?
Admins Import Period Attendance
With this step, all period attendance which instructors have entered will be imported to become students’ daily attendance values. Although it’s possible to do multiple imports, importing is typically only done once per day and after all period attendance has been entered.
The best practice is to enforce a deadline for instructors to enter attendance. For example, attendance should be finished by 15 minutes after the start of the day, at which point the administrator will import. Any changes the instructor makes to period attendance after attendance has been imported will not reflect in daily attendance.
The self-contained attendance import relies on the fact that each student is in one and only one attendance-taking class. Before attempting the import, the admin should verify attendance rosters to ensure students are not in more than one.
To import attendance:
- Go to School Main > Attendance > Daily Attendance
- Select a Date
- Import Period Attendance
- Select which classes you would like to import by checking/unchecking them. All classes with data will be selected by default. Only uncheck if you’d like to omit them from the import.
- Import
It’s possible to re-import if a teacher forgot to take attendance. All other students’ values will remain the same unless you indicate during the process, with a checkbox, that you would like to overwrite existing attendance values.
Admins Manage Daily Attendance
Under this attendance mode, we do not expect that, for the majority of students, their daily attendance will change from their import value. For example, we expect that the majority of students who are present at the beginning of the day will be present for the whole day, and likewise with absent students.
For students who arrive late, leave early, or were missing a value at import, admins should manually update their attendance in the Daily Attendance module. How attendance is updated will vary depending on your attendance options. Please refer to Attendance > Options to familiarize yourself with your school’s settings.
Manually select attendance codes
With this setting, you may change a student’s attendance value to any other value without restriction. Optionally, you may enter in/out times and daily attendance notes to explain the update, but this will have no effect on the attendance code you choose.
Automatic selection based on time in attendance
With this setting, the attendance codes which are available to a student depend on their calculated instructional minutes. In this attendance mode, instructional minutes may only be calculated when at least one in/out time is entered. It’s important that schools using this setting ensure that the minimum/maximum minute ranges are correct in Attendance > Attendance Codes
To update daily attendance
- Go to School Main > Attendance > Daily Attendance
- Select a Date
- (Optional) Uncheck Hide Present Students to monitor/update their attendance as well
- Enter Daily Attendance
- Enter an in/out time for the student (optional if you use manual selection). Use the blue plus sign to add additional entries.
- Use the attendance code drop-down to select a new code for the student. If you do not see a code appear here, it’s likely because the calculated minutes do not allow for it.
- Save