The Language Teacher
September 2001

Name Cards for Monitoring Attendance and Motivating Students

Rob Alan Brown

Bunkyo University, Chigasaki, Axis Jiu-Jitsu Academy, Tokyo

<relvisab@hotmail.com>




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Key Words: Attendance, motivation
Learner English Level: All levels
Learner Maturity Level: All levels
Preparation Time: About 30 minutes
Activity Time: N/A

Large classes and the need to record attendance are facts of life in most programs. Here is a simple and practical way to minimize wasted classroom time while actually achieving a motivational effect.

Ask the office to provide you with a stack of A3-size thin cardboard sheets. Following the example in Figure 1, fill out one card as a sample for the students. First, fold the card in half. Second, on one outside surface write the name you wish to be addressed by in class, in large, clear, dark letters, with the top of the letters toward the fold. This will be page 1. Third, on the other outside surface, write hometown, countries I have visited, hobbies, interests (for examples), with enough space to fill in the name of one's hometown, etc. This will be page 4. Next, open the card. The top part of the card will be page 2, and the bottom part will be page 3. Now on page 3, write from the top down and left to right, the day and date of each scheduled class meeting for the entire term. Write "=" after each date and make sure that there is at least an inch of space between the columns, and a half inch, more or less, between the rows. Now, on page 3, write on the center of the page, clearly and neatly, your full name the way it will appear on school records. Write it first in romaji, and below that, write it in kanji (if it can be). Now, below your name, write your student number. Finally, paste a small photograph of yourself in the right hand upper corner of the page.

Your name card is now complete. Photocopy enough that every student will have one to use as a model. Hand this out first. Then give them the A3 cardboard and ask them to fold their card like the sample that you will hold up for them to see. After they have done this, ask them to use the photocopy as a model, substituting their own name and personal details. You can also mention that the name on page 1 can be a nickname or a complete pseudonym.

In order to be able to efficiently record their grades after every class, you will need the information on all pages of the name card to follow the same pattern as the model. It will probably take the students about 30 minutes to fill out their cards in this way the first time.

At this point, ask the students to check their neighbor's card against the model. After this has been done, you will collect all of the cards that are satisfactorily filled out. At the start of every class, you will hand the students their name cards, which they will set up like little tents on their desk with page 1 facing the instructor. This will not take any longer than it would to read the attendance, and it will yield more accurate results (i.e., by eliminating "assisted attendance"). As the student receives his or her card, the instructor might easily make a comment or ask a question concerning the student's interests, when relevant, addressing each student by the name they chose to be addressed by. You will also be able to circulate among them and at a glance take note of information that will give you a sense for who that student is outside of the classroom.

On page 3, you will record the student's grade for the day -- yes, for the day, each and every day, each and every student. Actually, it isn't as difficult as it might seem. I inform them that the grading will be S (for satisfactory) which will reward a minimal meaningful attempt to participate in the class that day, which is operationalized as being in class, being awake, having a book, having it open to the relevant page, not talking to their classmates in Japanese, and responding to the occasional questions that I will ask them. If they fail to achieve an S for the day, they receive a U. This may seem excessively either-or, and all or none, as it does not distinguish between degrees of satisfactory participation. But that is the point. It is not intended to. Degree of satisfactory participation is accomplished over time, and the final grade represents consistency of effort. To encourage this sort of effort, students are rewarded on a daily basis for satisfactory performance but not punished for unsatisfactory performance, other than by not receiving an S. (We know that in all but a few special cases, reward is a more effective than punishment in facilitating learning.) I write an O with a slash through it as a placeholder to discourage anyone from attempting to alter their record.

Recording the daily grades is easy because the cards for the absent students are still on my desk, and the students' name cards are prominently displayed so I can make a discrete note in advance as to who will not be receiving their daily S. I enter the U's first, immediately after collecting the name cards. All of the remaining cards receive S's by default. The photographs on the upper right hand corner of page 4 help me remember the students even when they are not there, and in general, and especially at grading time, help to put a face to the numbers. Within two or three class meetings, the students will have grasped the cause and effect relationship between minimal meaningful participation one day and the presence of a nice large S on their name card the next class day, and it will subsequently be unnecessary to record more than an occasional U.

The final grading policy is also posted. The policy rewards the student with a particular letter grade according to how many Ss they have accumulated, for example, 14 Ss = C, 18 Ss = B, and so on. (I treat this as a minimum; depending on such factors as progress and their general attitude and earnestness, I feel free to give them a somewhat higher grade, and at this point the photograph on page 4 becomes essential.)

At the beginning of each class, all students know how they did in the previous class and how they are doing overall. They also know how many Ss they need to achieve the grade they want and accordingly, how many classes they can afford to miss. There are no secrets, either in how they are being evaluated or in what that evaluation is. In fact, they can clearly see that their grade is entirely dependent on their own effort. This seems to have a positive motivational effect, in that both attendance and participation improve as the term proceeds.



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