Students at Malesus Elementary are keeping up with their perfect attendance, thanks to the P.A.N.D.A. Club.

“We did a school needs assessment and we found out that one of the needs that we had was that we were having students who were coming in tardy,” said Debbie Henson, a 4^th grade teacher at Malesus.

“So we created P.A.N.D.A. it is an acronym that stands for Perfect Attendance No Days Absent and what we did was we tried to find a way to reward students who were here every day and stayed all day.”

Teachers have found that rewarding the students will encourage them to keep a good record of their attendance.

“We do this every 4 ½ weeks and we reward the students by, first of all they get a panda sticker and they also get to put their name up on the bulletin board as a panda student,” said Henson.

Not only are the students recognized for their achievement in the school they also receive free time outside of the classroom.

“We also reward them by giving them free time in the gym or outside and right now since we’re preparing for TCAP we also try to implement skills that they can work on,” stated Henson.

“So as they are doing their free time like jumping rope or doing things like that they’re also counting by 2’s or counting by 5’s or working on skills that will prepare them for TCAP.”

“This has worked out great for us,” said Henson.

Since the beginning of P.A.N.D.A 2 years ago, Malesus Elementary has improved attendance by 58%.