ThinkWave Support

Here you can see attendance marks and comments input by teachers or admins. You can see the attendance for the whole school, by grade level, by class, or by student. As the administrator, you can override teachers' attendance marks and comments. The precedence for whose attendance is counted, either the administrator's or the teachers', is set under Setup | Attendance | Staff/Admin Precedence. To set up custom attendance types such as Suspended or Field Trip, go to Setup | Attendance | Marks.

As an option, you can ask teachers to "Lock" attendance after they take attendance. This way you can be sure attendance has been taken for that period (run the "Classes not Finalized" report in the Reports tab). Note that a student is present by default. Only absent or tardy students need to have an attendance mark entered. The Present mark should only be used by admins to override another mark, such as Absent.

ThinkWave also automatically calculates Average Daily Attendance for a student and for a whole school. See the "Average Daily Attendance' report in the Reports tab.

Seeing Attendance

To see the attendance by day (or half-day or other custom category), select "All Students" or another group of students on the left. Then select the date on the top left. The calculated attendance for the day will appear in the right window. If you would like to see the attendance for a different date, select a different date in the calendar or from the pulldown in the upper left (the pulldown is in the orange rectangle). Day attendance is calculated from the customizable rules in Setup | Attendance | Daily Calculations. To override a Day attendance calculation, select the appropriate mark under "Override" and click "Save".

To see the attendance for a student, click on the "By Student" subtab above (located near the top, to the right of the orange rectangle). Select the name of the student on the left. If there are too many students to list in the column (default number of students is 30), a second pulldown will appear. Select the appropriate list of students from the second pulldown to go to those students. Alternately, select "prev" or "next" to navigate to those students. Then select the date on the top left. All the student's periods for that day and schedule will appear on the right. The associated teacher attendance marks and comments will appear. You can override the attendance and/or comnent that the teacher has entered. The student's Daily Attendance calculation will appear on the bottom of the page. You can adjust how the Daily Attendance is calculated by going to Setup | Attendance | Daily Calculations.

To see the attendance for a class, click on the "By Class" subtab above (located near the top, to the right of the orange rectangle). Then select the name of the class on the left. If there are too many classes to list in the column (default number of classes is 30), a second pulldown will appear. Select the appropriate list of classes from the second pulldown to go to those classes. Then select the date on the top left. The attendance for the class will appear in the right window. If you would like to see the attendance for a different date, select a different date in the calendar or from the pulldown in the upper left (the pulldown is in the orange box). On the bottom left of the main window you will see a small notation titled "Staff marks". "Staff marks" will say "Not Final" or "Final". If the teacher pressed "Lock", the notation will say "Final". If not, it will say "Not Final". Please note, the attendance and comments teachers have taken will appear whether or not teachers have pressed "Lock". This functionality will simply help you track which teachers have taken attendance, since the default attendance mark is "Present". If you use this functionality, you can also print out the "Classes not Finalized" report in the Reports screen. This report lists all the teachers who have not taken attendance for a range of dates and periods. If you would like to change the "Staff marks" from "Final" to "Not Final", click the Reset button next to "Staff marks".

Videos (silent)

Take Attendance Teachers

Add Attendance Types

Attendance Calculations