How can teachers take the meal register?

This article explains how teachers can take the meal register for students, detailing the process of selecting meal choices based on attendance and school setup. It highlights the importance of timing in taking the meal register after attendance and provides tips for managing meal choices effectively.

How to open the meal register

Top open your meal register, go to the Lesson Dashboard or Lesson Register of your AM class and select Meal Choices in the left-hand menu.

To choose or change meal choices, you can either tick the students to mark and select a bulk mark option, or click into a Meal Choice to edit it.
 

Top Tip: If your school has Meal Menus enabled, you'll see an extra column for Provision label which will show the actual meal taken. When using the Bulk actions, you can select the actual meal for the day.
 

Taking the meal register

You can take the Meal register to decide which meal each student should be given. What appears here depends on your school's setup: 

• If students are added only as Attendees to the meal, the students will appear on this page - you'll need to add in their meal choice for the day.
• If students have regular meal choices, these choices will populate on this page.
• If your school has set up Rotating Meal Menus and the parent has chosen a meal for their child, these choices will populate on this page. If they didn't choose, you can add the child's meal.

When should we take the meal register?

Meal registers open at 4 am each day, so you'll be able to see and edit meal choices in your registers at any point.

However, please note that the Meal Choices selected for students will automatically be based on the attendance mark given to the student in the attendance register:

• Present - Meal choice will be set to the student's default meal choice, or not filled in if there is no meal choice.
• Absent - The absent meal choice will be selected if this is set up.

Changing the attendance mark in the register from present to absent, or absent to present, will automatically change the meal register choice. You'll need to amend this again if it has overwritten the previous choice.

Because of this, we recommend taking the meal register after you take the attendance register.

How attendance marks affect meal choices

Attendance that is recorded for the last lesson before a meal starts affects your meal register. If you have two lessons before a meal, only the attendance marks of the later lesson affect the meal register. 

For example, you might have: a registration period between 9:00 and 9:15, an AM lesson between 9:15 and 12:00, and lunch starting at 12:00. In this case, only the attendance marks recorded for the lesson between 09:15 and 12:00 affect the meal register.

Changing meal attendance does not change lesson attendance.
 

Marking a student as Present

Students marked as physically present in the school will have their meal choices populated with their regular meal choice or rotating meal choice if no meal choice has been populated on the meal register yet.

So, if a teacher has manually entered student meal choices different to a student's regular or rotating meal choices before taking the lesson register, and they then mark the student as physically present, this does not change the manually set meal choice.

If no meal choice has been recorded, the system assigns the default choice. If there is no default choice, the system leaves the meal choice blank.
 

Marking a student as Absent

Students who are marked as physically absent automatically have their lesson meal choices changed to the Absent provision. Or, if no Absent provision has been set up, their meal choice is removed and left blank.

The automation checks more than just whether marks statutorily count as absences; if a mark indicates a student is not physically in school, this will mark them as absent on the meal register, too. For example, students marked as being on a school trip (V) or Educated off-site (B) are presumed not to be on school premises at the time of the meal and marked as absent on the meal register.

If you change a student back to Present in the lesson register after marking them as Absent, their meal choice reverts to their default choice. If an earlier meal choice in the register was not their default choice because it had been manually set, the choice still reverts to the default once the student is marked as Present, not the last recorded choice.

If students do not have default or menu choices, setting a student to Present after they have been marked as Absent changes their meal choice to blank.
 

Removing attendance completely

Removing a student's attendance entirely also removes their meal choice. The student's meal choice will be blank on the meal register, not the Absent provision.
 

Marking students as Late

Students who are marked as late or late after the register closes are presumed to be physically present in school; therefore, these students are treated as Present when arbor automatically populates meal choices based on attendance. 

FAQs

I have the meal register open, but I can't see a column for meal options to add. What do I do?

In rare instances, you may see a list of students on the meal register, but not see any columns to add meal choices to. This can happen if the column has accidentally been hidden or the table needs reformatting.

If this happens, try these steps:

1. Click the Cog icon above the meal choices table (there are your table settings)
2. Click Reset table settings
3. If there was a formatting issue or any columns were hidden, the table will now show the meal options.

What happens if a student is marked as absent in the lesson register (e.g. for an appointment) before a meal but physically returns to school before the meal?

In this case, because the student is still marked as absent in the lesson register even after they return, Arbor has no way of knowing that the student is back, and will by default keep their meal choice as Absent. 

To mark the student as taking a meal, you need to manually override this in the meal register by changing the choice from Absent to their preferred choice.

As a teacher, am I able to add my own meal choice to the meal register?

No, staff meal choices cannot be added to the same register (the one available to teachers) as student meal choices. 

However, your school's admins can set up regular meal choices for you on your profile if they have the Staff Profile: Meals: Administer permission to automatically populate the meal register with your choices.

Or, they can manually add your choice once the register opens. Admins can find more on managing staff meals here: Setting up and managing staff meals