I am a firm believer that in order for students to be successful, they must have a classroom environment that has structure and discipline – in addition to a firm curriculum base. I have tried many different strategies to document student behaviors – a clipboard checklist and a behavior flipchart to name a few, but they have never had all of the components that I desired – a way for students to have a visible reminder of classroom expectations and a non-cluttered, hassle free way to track the data.
While on Twitter one night, I found a tweet about ClassDojo. ClassDojo is an online program that allows you to provide immediate feedback for student behavior (positive and negative). It enables you to easily award and record points, achievements and rewards for behavior and performance in class in real-time, with just one click of your smartphone or laptop.
Since my laptop is continuously hooked to my projector and Promethean board, students can immediately see their progress.
In addition, ClassDojo allows you to create reports for yourself, parents, and even your administration. I love it, because it allows me to acknowledge/reward desired behaviors (and I make a BIG deal out of it) and identify students who may sometimes fly under the radar.
I have found that positive behaviors have increased, and negative behaviors have decreased since I began using ClassDojo. Students are aware of the behaviors that will cause them to earn points – so they make sure that they have those components; and in turn they have stopped doing those things that will cause them to lose points.
If you have an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or an Android smart phone, you can update the behaviors from your device and it will show up on the computer. Try ClassDojo and leave me a comment on how it works for you.