Tracking Student Attendance and Behavior Tallies

Setting up in Counter App

Use one counter per student. Use a code rather than a full name, for example initials plus class, and keep a key elsewhere if your school requires it. The code badge appears on the counter card, so the list stays readable without showing full names to anyone glancing at your screen.

Inside the counter, add a tag for each behavior you are tracking, ideally no more than four:

• "Late (min)" with step 1, so each tap is a minute;
• "Call out";
• "Prompt to start";
• "Hand up".

Give positive behaviors a green color and others a neutral color rather than red; you will be showing this to a student at some point.

Categories, which nest up to three levels, can hold the support plans: "Support > Year 8 > Term 2". Pin the category while the plan is active.

Recording during lessons

Speed decides whether data collection survives. A few habits help:

• Open the student's counter before the lesson, not when the first event happens.
• Use Single view for one key behavior: a large circular counter for that tag, with target progress and the tag's latest note. If you track more than one behavior, List view is the better fit.
• Use List view if you track several behaviors at once, with a row per tag and plus and minus buttons.
• Correct mistakes with minus. The history keeps both events, which is honest and fine.

Volume-button counting can help when you are moving around the room. Turn it on in settings; the keys can add or subtract in the background and on the lock screen. You can remap the keys and set a silent vibration per key so the count is invisible to the class. It is off by default, and some devices still show the volume bar.

The lock-screen notification has minus, plus and Stop buttons, which is often enough for a discreet tap.

Duration and timing

Some behaviors matter for how long they last rather than how often they happen: time out of seat, time to settle, length of a refusal. Each tag has its own stopwatch, which you can start and stop from the counting screen. Record the duration as a note on the event, such as "4 min, resolved with choice".

Interval sampling is another option: every few minutes, check whether the behavior is happening and record yes or no. The tag timer has presets of 30 seconds, 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 minutes, with countdown beeps and a choice of seven alarm sounds and eight vibrations. A silent vibration every five minutes is a good prompt to look up and record.

Goals and positive reinforcement

Once you have a baseline, set a goal with the student. Tags and counters can count up to a target or down from one, and reaching it can trigger a sound or vibration. Options include:

• Count up: "Hand up" with a target of 5 per lesson. When the alert goes, that's a visible win.
• Count down: "Reminders" starting at 3. Keeping one in hand at the end of the lesson earns the agreed reward.
• Auto reset starts the next lesson at zero; auto lock prevents accidental extra taps once a goal is reached.

Keep goals small and adjust them as the student succeeds. A goal that is achieved most days is more motivating than an ambitious one achieved rarely.

Reviewing the data

After a week or two, look at the data in two places.

The history lists every event with step, exact time and the value before and after. Scrolling it, you can see whether events cluster at particular times: the start of the day, after break, the last lesson on Friday. History is not searchable, so consistent notes help.

The dashboard shows the total against the target, increments against decrements, a seven-day activity chart and a pie chart by tag. The bar chart makes day-of-week patterns visible. The pie chart shows the balance between positive and other behaviors.

Look for patterns in time and context, not just totals. Five call-outs in one lesson and none in four others tells a different story from one a day.

Adding context with notes

Numbers say how often; notes say why. A short note on an event can record what happened just before (the antecedent) and what happened after (the consequence): "after partner change; settled with a task card". Over a few weeks, notes reveal triggers that frequency alone cannot.

The All Notes screen collects every note for the counter with its tag and time, and it can be sorted. Before a meeting, reading the notes list for five minutes is often more useful than the totals.

Keep notes factual and professional. Write as if the student and their family might read them, because in some schools they can request to.

Sharing with colleagues and families

For a support meeting, export the student's counter. CSV and Excel exports let you tick Summary, Events and Notes; a Summary plus Notes export gives a short, readable overview. The HTML report is useful when you want a single document to show on screen.

With families, show rather than tell. A dashboard bar chart showing call-outs falling over three weeks, next to hands up rising, is a positive conversation that a parent can understand at a glance.

With the student, share the goal tag. Students often like seeing the circle fill in Single view.

How should teachers protect student behavior data?

Behavior data about a named student is sensitive. Counter App stores this data on the phone, with no account, no Counter App cloud and no live sync between phones. That reduces some risks, but it puts responsibility on you:

• follow your school's policy on student data on personal or school devices;
• use a screen lock;
• use codes rather than full names in counter titles;
• store exports in the school's approved location and delete local copies;
• lock counters when lending the phone to anyone.

Deleted counters go to the trash and can be restored, so an accidental delete is not a disaster. When a plan ends, delete the counter, check what remains in the trash, and follow your school's policy on removing records. If you change phones, use a backup ZIP to move the data; the import preview lets you replace, copy or skip duplicates.