Want some help with your classroom management? Class Dojo is the answer! Class Dojo is a wonderful free resource that any teacher of any grade level can use. It organizes your students into classes, and allows you to track their behavior using a points system. As you can see below, each student is given their own little monster that they can customize, and throughout class, they can earn or lose points based on their behavior.
The great thing about Class Dojo is that it isn't just about punishment. In fact, I give out more positive reinforcement than anything with it. It allows to you to easily reward positive behaviors and scold negative behaviors by issuing points to each student. It is very easy to customize the behaviors you're looking for. Really, customization is probably Class Dojo's strongest attribute.
Positive points can look something like these...
While negative points can look like this...
You can add as many as you want and name them whatever you choose.
As you can see in the second picture up there, you can see the whole class and where they are at in points any time. If you want to only keep tabs daily (like I do), then you can reset the bubble every morning. This doesn't make their week's points disappear however. I also have some friends who like to use it as a weekly tally of behavior, so they don't reset the bubbles until the weekend. At any time throughout the week, you can look at reports.
There are entire class reports,
and there are individual student reports.
This is where my favorite part comes in. I want Class Dojo to motivate students to do well, so I offer a reward at the end of each week. Every student who has achieved at least 90% positive for the week are entered into a drawing. The winner of the drawing wins a prize (usually a candy bar). I don't let the same person win more than once per semester, so everyone has a better chance, but the winners are displayed for the class.
Excuse the awful picture, but this is my winners display. I wish it were more colorful like the rest of my room, but color ink is in short supply at my school. This way, students are recognized for their achievement, and I can remember who has won in the past. I didn't do this last year, and I had a hard time remembering my previous winners. As you can see at the bottom, I also put the best class of the week. At the end of each 9 weeks, I will reward the class with the most wins a free period on the computers. This allows the students to work toward a goal as a unit as well as individuals. It's easier to have bad behavior when it only affects you. When it starts bringing down the rest of the class, guilt will set it more quickly.
There are some other great things about Class Dojo as well. You can take attendance, which makes it easy to not give points to absent students. There is a great random feature, so you can call on students easily. I use that a lot for when I need something done that everyone will volunteer for, or when I am having class discussions. There is also a timer, which is great when you want to give only a certain amount of time for an activity, but you don't want to have to watch the clock. It sounds an alarm when the time is up.
These are the many ways I use Class Dojo, but I'm sure there are many more. Like I said, everything is able to be customized, so make it work for you however you can.
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