Heather introduced me to the free
web 2.0 class management program Classdojo.
She was very excited about the positive effect it had on the behavior of
one of her challenging 8th grade classes. I was very excited to here
about the success of Classdojo to affect a positive change in student behavior.
I had 35 chatty 6th grade chorus students who had not responded to
the PBIS strategies adopted by Lake Elkhorn Middle School to reinforce positive
student behavior.
ClassDojo provides a timely way to
let students know how they are doing in class. Some of my 6th grade
students would ask me several times during class, "How am I doing today,
Mrs. Bullough?". One student asked me every day as he left the room,
"What is my participation grade for today." Classdojo is a
continuous visual reminder to students of their progress as they are awarded
points for their participation during class. It definitely had a
positive effect on 6th graders behavior. I will use it again this year
and explore using my smartphone and iPad in addition to my computer with this
program.
I love ClassDojo! I've used it with my students before and it works great! I did notice that if I used it too much, they were disinterested and started to take on the "I don't care" attitude. So for fourth quarter I used it but did not make as much of an emphasis on it and it worked much better. I have a lot of students that don't care about participation grades and do not have parental support so they are not fazed if they get a phone call home. However, when they see their peers receiving awards for good behavior, they are motivated.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of this tool and looked into it a little bit last year, although I didn't end up actually using it with my students. I give participation grades in my class and this would definitely make the process easier, but I opted not to use it because it didn't seem like the right fit for the age group I work with: high school juniors and seniors. If I end up teaching freshmen in a future school year, I would be much more inclined to use this and will definitely keep it in the back of my mind! I definitely recommend that you play around with the smartphone/iPad apps. You have to configure your classes on the website first, but then you can do everything really quickly and easily on mobile devices. It seems like that would be great if you were walking around your classroom observing students while they were working individually or in groups!
ReplyDeleteSadly, this would be a nice tool to use in high school, at least mine. I would like to set this up to keep track of bathroom breaks. Can a parent be notified when his/her child gets a comment made about him/her during class. I would love to be able to show a parent during a conference, or show an administrator for that matter, how many times some students avoid class by "going to the bathroom." In today's backwards world, you really can't say no to a student that want to use the restroom, but we can at least build a circumstantial case about avoiding class.
ReplyDeleteI have considered using this in my classroom, too. I love reinforcing the good behavior. Unfortunately I don't have a smartphone or iPad so it's a little less convenient to run over to my computer to use it. Does anyone have any feedback about how to make it more convenient or manage it better?
ReplyDeleteI love ClassDojo as well, but be forewarned that we were told we aren't allowed to use these type of classroom managers to the extent we were before anymore. There was an issue with parents not wanting the possibility of a record showing their child's negative classroom behavior. We had a big discussion about it at our iPad cohort.
ReplyDelete