Creating student portfolios isn’t simply about recording classwork for teachers. Student Stories gives parents a window into the classroom. Erika Gessler, a 2nd grade teacher, knows that the drawing update coming soon to ClassDojo’s student portfolios means parents will get to see a whole lot more. “When my students and I heard about adding drawings to Student Stories, we were so excited! They keep updating the app in anticipation.”

It can be tough sending your child off to school for the first time, and for Kindergarten Teacher Elsbeth Schweitzer, she’s using Student Stories to put parents at ease. With the new extended video recording time, and capability to upload videos from outside of the app, Elsbeth is excited for parents to be more connected with not only their child, but with the classroom as a whole.

We’ve all been there: making sure every student turns in their writing assignment, collecting reflection journals, carting home a stack of binders in order to provide thoughtful and individualized feedback. It’s nothing short of a challenge! But those assignments, journals, and binders are gold, showcasing students’ creativity and emotions. There must be a more efficient way for them to them to express themselves through writing, and for you to provide the feedback necessary to help them develop into incredible writers. Enter Student Stories.

As all teachers know, each student is unique. Some enjoy writing, while others have a knack for drawing or acting! This fall, help every student shine with these 4 updates to Student Stories:

Today, we’re incredibly excited to announce our new collaboration with Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence to bring Mindfulness to millions of classrooms around the world! Together with Yale, we’ve created a set of activities related to Mindfulness for home and school; these will be coming out over the next two weeks.

Why mindfulness?

• Updates From ClassDojo

Did you know Halloween is the most shared moment on ClassDojo? It’s true! Two times as many photos, videos, and messages are shared on Halloween than any other day of the year. That’s a lot of moments! And one little monster is the reason why…we’re talking about MOJO of course !🙂

• Updates From ClassDojo

Today ClassDojo and Making Caring Common (MCC), a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), announced an initiative designed to help millions of students worldwide learn about the power of empathy. Through the collaboration, ClassDojo and HGSE MCC created an original series of animated, short films along with discussion guides that will be available to all teachers, parents, and students on ClassDojo.

From self-confidence and encouraging curiosity to healthy attitudes and life skills, the first teachers to appear in a child’s life are the parents. The educational journey begins almost immediately after a child is born, and learning remains constant from that point on.

Through love, motivation, and encouragement, parents help form the foundation for their child. Kids’ overall character, desire to learn, and interests are great factors in the success and sustainability of their learning.

That said, there comes a time in every child’s life when they must leave the nest to embark on a new experience – to begin school.

School is not only a place where the parent-created foundation and skills are enhanced by formal teaching, it’s a place where new relationships will be born. Two of the most obvious relationships are peer-to-peer and student-to-teacher. But, often times people forget that another pertinent relationship is the parent-teacher dynamic; there is no better combination when it comes to the success of a child’s educational experience.

• Ideas and Tips

We hope you and your class enjoyed this year as much as we did. Our team has been reflecting the last few days on what we’ve done well, and what we’d like to do better next year. As we were doing that, we thought students might love the same activity !🙂

You can now download a Certificate of Achievement, celebrating a year well done, as well as an “End of Year Reflection” worksheet. Download now.

We hope your class has fun with this!

We’re excited to announce a big addition to how teachers can give feedback (aka Dojo points!) to students. Teachers can now share feedback with no point value attached, or “zero-point feedback” !🙂 Learn how to get started here.

Like so many other features before it, this one started with thousands of teachers asking for the zero-point option. ClassDojo already had the ability to weight points from +1 to +5 and -1 to -5, so why not 0? It was a fair question!

ClassDojo aims to help teachers create amazing classroom communities with students and parents, and it all starts with a positive classroom culture. So when considering the zero-point option, we needed to ask why and how it would it help create that all-too-important positive culture.

As we saw how teachers used ClassDojo this year, we took note of something: feedback points are just a simple way to communicate. With just a tap, teachers can reinforce school values, classroom expectations, and encourage any skill.

This simplified communication, though, says much more to students than just “+1” or “-1.” Every +1 or -1 comes with an implied message

For example, you might give a Dojo point for “participation,” but what a student hears is more significant:

And a +1 for “Bravery” could mean:

But there are times when giving a point says more than you want, and might even be counterproductive to the community you’re building. For example, teachers often use “needs work points” to say, “Oops, you’re a little off course right now.” But since that message came with a “-1” point value, students might hear, “I’m disappointed in you, and you’re now less valued in our classroom.” Piling on to that, their parents often think, “Uh-oh, I need to step in right away.”

Adding the zero-point option made perfect sense. Teachers need a simple way to let students know they are off-course without making them feel less valued, and keeping parents in the loop without making mountains out of molehills!