Class Dojo

Hey there, friends… hope you had a restful weekend! We busy teachers sure deserve it! I, on the other hand, seem to have a hard time resting and relaxing… at least that’s what my husband says. (LOL- He’s right!)  My weekends are spent washing laundry, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, writing blog posts, creating activities for my 3rd graders, etc… I guess that’s why I crash the minute my head hits the pillow! (Besides the house work, I LOVE everything else!) Just this morning while vacuuming the house, my mind was going a mile a minute and I decided that it was time to share with you how Class Dojo has been working in my own classroom. I’ve been using it for about 5 weeks now and I must say that my students absolutely LOVE IT! They can’t get enough of it and I must say that I enjoy how easy it is to setup and use. It is very user friendly and the best part is that it is FREE!!!! Once you sign up for a free account at Class Dojo you enter your student’s names and they are each assigned a random avatar or adorable monster character which they can easily personalize. Next, you enter a series of positive behaviors that you would like your students to exhibit in the classroom, and assign them each points. You can choose anywhere between 1-5 points for each behavior. After that, you add the negative behaviors or “Needs Work” behaviors and enter the number of points the students will be deducted for exhibiting this behavior. Once you have these simple steps completed you are ready to reward your students with points. What the students LOVE is that I usually have the home screen on the Smart Board. Then whenever I award a student a point they hear a bell and their name appears on the screen letting them know why they received a point. (instant feedback) Likewise, if I catch a student off task I can take away a point. At this time a different sound is heard (sounds somewhat sad) and the student’s name appears on the screen as well as the behavior they need to work on. I try to reward mostly positive points, and the majority of the time when the off task students hear the positive points, they get on track. However, if it doesn’t work and I’ve already given them a warning, I do take a point away. Later on this week, I will go into details about the positive and negative behaviors, the timer function, the handy dandy Class Dojo app, and I will explain what my students do with all of the points they accumulate during the week. For now…good night and happy teaching,