Engage with students (during school year)

• Engagement can occur through site field trips, orientations, or informally at student’s school.

Family friendly signs & décor on site

• Welcome Poster – including names of all summer participants.
• Update photo wall weekly, chronicling the summer experience for students.

Assign a staff buddy

• Each student should be assigned to a staff member, who will then be responsible for personally greeting the student each morning and congratulating him or her each week for good attendance.

Absent phone calls

• A staff member should call families of absent students who have registered for the program. Phone calls should be placed each day a student is absent, to enforce that the student is valued in the program and that attendance is important.

Acknowledge importance of attendance

• During morning circle, or the first morning activity, staff should acknowledge the students’ attendance and its importance.

Good news phone call

• Program staff members periodically call parents to highlight behavioral and academic strengths and accomplishments of students.

Progress reports

• To be sent home every Friday, individualized for each student. Designed to be short, simple and concise. Teachers need to be able to complete reports quickly and parents need to easily understand them. Check out a template here.

Culminating event

• Create an end of program event for students to anticipate, such as a barbeque, book publishing party, or performance.
• Highlight the last day event from first day forward to build anticipation, and inspire daily attendance.

Incentivize perfect attendance

• Weekly raffles for perfect weekly attendance, or a big field trip at the end of the summer for students with perfect attendance.
• Wall of Attendance Fame where top attenders’ photographs are posted.

Take-home conversation starter

• A half-sheet piece of paper that describes a highlight of the day and a question for a parent to ask their child.