Working With Groups

How to create a defined student group, manage facilitators and membership, document each session, track attendance, and preserve useful student and program history.

What a group accomplishes

A group organizes a named, defined roster of students receiving a shared series of services. It keeps the group’s purpose, schedule, facilitators, membership history, coded sessions, attendance, notes, and resources together.

Groups do	Groups do not
Maintain a student roster with join and exit history.	Replace individual goals, cases, referrals, or consent records.
Record each group session, its codes, minutes, and attendance.	Automatically create an individual service log for every member.
Show group participation from each student’s profile.	Fit a school-wide effort that has no defined student roster.
Feed group attendance, membership, type, and intervention reporting.	Generate future sessions from the recurring schedule automatically.

Use a group when the roster matters.

If you need to know exactly which students belong, who attended each meeting, and how participation changes over time, use Groups. A broader school or community initiative without an individual roster is better suited to Macro-Level Efforts.

When to create a group

Create a group for a planned series such as an attendance-improvement cohort, social-skills group, grief group, coping-skills group, academic motivation series, or college-readiness workshop. Use a one-time individual service log when there is no continuing group structure.

Groups workspace before the first facilitated group is created — The Groups workspace summarizes only the groups where you are currently an active facilitator.

Create the group

Open Groups and select New Group.
Give the group a clear, durable name.
Describe the intended population, purpose, and approach.
Choose the school, status, and group type.
Optionally set a member capacity, date range, recurrence, day, time, and planned duration.
Confirm the facilitator assignments and save.

New Group form completed for the Attendance Success Group — The example defines a short-term intervention group focused on attendance routines, barriers, and weekly action plans.

Group type	Typical use
Therapeutic/Support	A facilitated support or therapeutic process.
Psychoeducational	Structured learning about a social, emotional, or behavioral topic.
Support	Peer connection and facilitated support around a shared experience.
Skills Training	Repeated practice of specific academic, behavioral, or life skills.
Intervention	A targeted response to an identified student need.
College/Career Readiness	Postsecondary planning, applications, financial aid, or career preparation.

Use status to describe the group’s lifecycle

Status	Use it when
Planning	The structure and roster are still being prepared.
Active	The group is currently operating.
On Hold	Sessions are temporarily paused but the group remains open.
Completed	The planned series ended normally.
Canceled	The group will not proceed or ended without completion.

The schedule is descriptive, not an automatic session generator.

Weekly, biweekly, monthly, and as-needed settings communicate the plan. Facilitators still create a session record for each meeting that is held or canceled.

Set facilitators and access

At least one facilitator is required, and the person creating the group must include themselves. Additional district team members may be assigned as Lead Facilitator, Facilitator, Co-Facilitator, Participant, Observer, Presenter, or Intern, with an optional allocation percentage and participation dates.

Group schedule and facilitator assignment for the Attendance Success Group — The worked example meets weekly for 45 minutes and identifies Amanda Davis as the lead facilitator.

The main Groups workspace and group-management pages are scoped to active facilitators within their district and school access. Keep facilitator dates current so the right people retain management access.

Build and maintain the roster

Open Members, search for a student, enter the joined date, and add an optional membership note. A group may include students from the group’s school; SocialNote prevents the same student from having two active memberships in that group.

Attendance Success Group roster with Gabriel Hernandez, Aria Lopez, and Marcus Patel — The roster preserves each student’s joined date, active or exited state, and membership note.

Max Members is a planning field.

Use it to communicate intended capacity and manage the roster accordingly. It does not replace your review of whether the group remains appropriately sized.

Log each group session

Select New Session after a meeting occurs—or to record that a scheduled meeting was canceled. Enter the date, session type, topic, delivery method, contact site, planned minutes, and actual minutes.

Group session details for a 45-minute instructional attendance session at school — The example records a 45-minute instructional session on attendance barriers and morning routines.

Every non-canceled session requires at least one service code. Choose the primary code for the main activity, add another only for a distinct additional service, and record actual minutes for each code.

Group session service-code selector showing code 909 Attendance improvement group — Code 909 accurately describes the group service delivered in the worked example.

See the Service Code Reference for the full default taxonomy. Keep code minutes consistent with the work performed; SocialNote does not require their sum to equal the session’s actual duration.

Canceled sessions

Turn on Session canceled and provide a reason. A canceled session does not keep attendance or service-code rows. Recording it preserves the scheduling history without counting it as a held session.

Record attendance and participation

Current active members appear automatically in the new-session attendance table. Choose Present, Absent, Excused, Late, or Left Early for each student and add a concise participation note when it helps explain engagement or next steps.

Group session with code 909 and attendance entered for three students — The example records two students present and one late, with a brief participation note for each.

Historical attendees remain on an existing session even if they later exit the group. Facilitators may also update attendance from the saved session page without reopening the entire session record.

Attendance summaries use two related definitions.

The group overview’s Presents Logged and session row count only the Present status. On a student’s Groups page, Present and Late both count as attended when calculating the attendance rate.

Write useful session notes

Field	Purpose and audience
Session Notes	The shared record of what the group covered, interventions used, and group-level response.
Confidential Notes	A creator-only note for limited-access professional detail. Another facilitator editing the session cannot see or replace it.
Facilitator Notes	Shared facilitator planning, observations, or preparation for the next meeting.
Participation Notes	A brief student-specific observation tied to that session’s attendance row.

Group session notes and facilitator notes completed for the attendance session — The shared note summarizes the session, while facilitator notes carry the next instructional plan forward.

Document the intervention, response, and next step.

A useful session note is concise enough to scan but specific enough to explain what the facilitator did and how the group responded. Avoid unnecessary sensitive detail and leave the confidential field empty unless it is genuinely needed.

Monitor the group and student history

The group overview summarizes active members, sessions, facilitators, present attendance entries, purpose, schedule, and recent sessions. The Groups list adds your facilitated-group totals, monthly sessions, search, and filters for type, school, and status.

Attendance Success Group overview with three members and one completed session — The recent-session row brings the topic, attendance, code, and held or canceled state together.

Each member’s student profile also includes a Groups page with active and historical memberships, sessions attended, attendance rate, schedule, duration, and facilitator.

Marcus Patel's Groups page showing the Attendance Success Group and attendance summary — The student view connects group participation back to the student’s broader support history.

Attachments

Use the group’s Attachments area for shared curricula, handouts, plans, or other authorized resources. You may upload up to four files at once, with a maximum size of 25 MB each. Supported formats include PDF, common images, Word, Excel, and CSV. Follow district policy before uploading student information.

Complete memberships and the group responsibly

When a student leaves, archive the membership with a left date and, when useful, an exit reason: Completed, Withdrawn, Transferred, Attendance, or Other. This removes the student from the active roster while preserving membership and attendance history.

When the planned series ends, edit the group status to Completed. Use On Hold for a temporary pause and Canceled when the group did not proceed or ended without completion.

Keep facilitator and membership dates accurate.
Create one session record for every held or canceled meeting.
Use a service code that describes the actual group activity.
Record actual duration and individual attendance promptly.
Keep shared, facilitator, confidential, and participation notes in their intended lanes.
Archive memberships instead of erasing their history.
Change the group status when the program pauses or ends.

Completed example: Attendance Success Group

Field	Example entry
Purpose	A four-week intervention focused on attendance barriers, routines, peer accountability, and weekly action plans.
Schedule	Tuesdays at 10:00 AM, July 7–28, 2026; 45 minutes.
Facilitator	Amanda Davis — Lead Facilitator.
Roster	Gabriel Hernandez, Aria Lopez, and Marcus Patel.
Session Topic	Attendance barriers and morning routines.
Primary Code	909 — Attendance improvement group; 45 minutes.
Attendance	Two Present; one Late.
Next Step	Review action steps and introduce peer-accountability check-ins.

The group record holds the shared program structure. Each session documents the service that occurred, while attendance connects that session back to each participating student.