Curriculum Night

Presentation Summary

There are two types of student absences: excused absences, which do not impact a student’s attendance mark, and unexcused absences, which can have an impact their mark.

Excused Absences and the New Absence-Reporting Tool

Please report your child’s excused absences to the Main Office using the new absence-reporting tool in MyUTS [link], which replaces email reporting that was used last year.

Instructions on how to report.

Parents should report excused absences and include the specific reason:

  • IIlness
  • Medical appointments
  • Compassionate leave
  • Religious observances

Absences arising from activities organized by UTS such as Debate and Robotics trips will be considered excused – staff supervisors are responsible for reporting these to the Main Office.

Athletics or other competitive activities outside of school are also likely to be considered excused absences, but reporting the absence must be done in advance (ideally two weeks ahead of time) through the Absence Approval Form, which you can find in the Family Handbook and in MyUTS.

Unexcused Absences

In general, absences that fall under the category of avoidable will be considered unexcused. Multiple unexcused absences will impact a student’s attendance mark; and missed assessments due to unexcused absences will generally not be accommodated. Families will be notified when unexcused absences will have an impact on their child’s marks.

Attendance Marks

Attendance is now part of the final grade for credit courses across all Ontario secondary schools.

UTS grade 9 and 10 courses: 12% of the final grade will come from attendance.

UTS grade 11 and 12 courses: 8% of the final grade comes from attendance.

Attendance marks will be reviewed and determined by a committee that includes members of our Academic and Student Support teams, not by a student’s teachers.

Because attendance makes up a significant component of a student’s final grades, accurately reporting your student’s absences is important. This will help us identify patterns of absenteeism or late arrivals early, so we can work with students and their families to understand what is happening and provide support to avoid impacting a student’s grade.

Participation Marks

Participation is also now part of a high school student’s final grade.

Grade 9 and 10 Credit Courses: 3% of the final grade comes from participation

Grade 11 and 12 Credit Courses: 2% of the final grade is based on participation

Students will have advance notice from the teachers about what counts toward their participation mark, and opportunities to prepare their contributions. The mark will come from evidence of engagement, and not from chance observations on the part of the teacher.

Throughout the year, teachers will collect observable evidence of engagement such as:

Exit Tickets: Reflects on learning by identifying a key idea, question, connection, challenges or next step

Socratic Seminars: Advances the discussion by asking questions, responding thoughtfully, respectfully challenging ideas, synthesizing

Rotating through a Role of Responsibility: Takes responsibilities for a defined aspect of the learning environment and supports the participation and success of peers

Completing Homework Assignments: Comes prepared to participate in learning activities and uses assigned work to contribute to subsequent learning

Departments will either adopt one strategy for all classes, or course teams will adopt an age and stage appropriate strategy (for example, all Grade 9 English courses will use journal entries, while all Grade 10 English courses will use Socratic Seminars). Teachers will be sharing their plans to measure participation in the coming days.

At UTS, we see the introduction of participation marks as an opportunity to start important conversations with our young people about how we learn. Learning skills that were once considered soft can now be viewed as enduring power skills that will equip our students with the tools needed to engage with the challenges of the future.