Enter student attendance by homeroom or classroom from the office

You can use the Daily Roster side-tab to enter student daily attendance from the office by homeroom or classroom input period, depending on your school's daily attendance preferences.

Example: Your school distributes attendance input sheets for each homeroom. Homeroom teachers manually take attendance on these sheets and submit them to the office, where office staff members enter those attendance records in Aspen.

You can also enter lunch counts by class on this page, if your school tracks that information.

To enter student attendance by homeroom or classroom:

  1. Log on to the School view.
  2. Click the Attendance tab, Daily Roster side-tab. The Daily Roster page displays a list of homerooms or classroom input periods in your school.
  3. Note: If your school takes second daily attendance, click the drop-down in the top-left section of the page to select whether you are entering AM or PM daily attendance. The list refreshes to display the appropriate homerooms or classrooms.

  4. Click the homeroom or classroom name or number you want to enter attendance for. The list of students in that room appears:
  1. In the Code column, click the correct code for any students who are not present. One of the following occurs:
    • Aspen highlights that row with gray. This alerts you that you clicked a code but have not saved that attendance record.
    • 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 the Override Reason field is required on the pop-up, click and select a code. If you select Other, enter an Activity Comment to describe the reason. Click OK.
  1. After you click a code, the system highlights that row with gray. This alerts you that you clicked a code but have not saved that attendance record.

    Important:  If you click more than one code, or click a code twice, be sure to verify the values that appear in the Attendance column. Depending on how your Aspen system administrator creates attendance codes, the system either adds additional codes you click, or replaces codes you click. For example, if you click A (absent), and then click T (tardy) in the Code column, Aspen either displays AT or only T in the Attendance column.

    If you select a code for a student by mistake, click P to mark the student present and delete the attendance record.

    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.

  1. If your school tracks lunch counts, enter the appropriate numbers in the lunch count fields.
  2. Click Save or Post. (The button that appears depends on your district's or school's daily attendance preference.) The system alerts you to how many attendance records you entered for the homeroom or class.
  3. In the breadcrumbsClosed, click Classes to return to the list of classes, or use the record navigation bar to move to the next homeroom or class on the list.
  4. Notes:

    • You can use the record navigation bar Record navigation bar. to move through homerooms or class input periods and enter all records at once. Then, click Save to save all attendance at once.
    • In the Attendance column, [edit] appears next to any code you entered. Click [edit] if you need to change an attendance record.

  5. Notes: When the Attendance activity tracking preference is enabled by the district (root organization), intermediate organization or school:

    • The Attendance History icon might appear in the History column. This icon indicates that the student had a class or daily attendance record for that 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.
    • If theOverride Reason field appears on the Attendance Details pop-up, then it is a required field. Click , and then select a code to describe the absence. If you select Other, enter an Activity Comment to describe the reason.
    • You can hover your cursor over an attendance record to see a description of it.