I use ClassDojo for both behavioral and academic monitoring. I have multiple teams of students within ClassDojo that I award points to. These teams include partnerships and table groups. Their partnerships originally stemmed from their reading partners, but quickly expanded to desk partners as well. If either partner was off-task, they would not earn the points. It became a way for the students to not only work in teams, but to work together to accomplish a common goal.

The benefit of using ClassDojo instead of other traditional methods, is that the teacher can be mobile. As you walk around the room you are able to award points, giving students both an auditory and visual stimulus. When awarding points to groups, students quickly sharpen up their behavior and display teamwork! They hold each other accountable to make sure their group is behaved and on task. This makes my life much easier.

To get students even more engaged with ClassDojo, I implemented a weekly incentive program. At the end of each week, I would view reports and reward the team that earned the most points with either a technology party (using computers during recess) or a popcorn party. Providing these sorts of rewards kept students excited about ClassDojo, looking forward to the next week and the opportunity to be the winning team. Very excited to continue to use ClassDojo this year! 🙂

It was report card time and I wanted to share with my families how grades were determined in the behavior section. My behavior grades were based on ClassDojo. One parent mentioned that I seemed to use the negative behavior feature far more than the positive. I went back to my reports and noticed this parent was correct. I had far more negative activity than positive. My focus was off and I needed to find a way to use ClassDojo in a more positive manner.

After a long dialogue with my class, we came to the idea of “First to…”. We turned ClassDojo into a reward game. We would clear all points and then set a goal for how long it would take for all students to earn 10 points. If it took 10 days to earn ten points, we would clear points and set a new goal: 8 days to earn 10 points!

This system allowed students the opportunity to reflect on their behavior. They could ask questions like, “How was my day? What might be some things I did today to earn a Dojo point? What might be some things I can do today to earn a Dojo point?”

We also acknowledged students that made it to a certain number in a given amount of time. For example, students competed to be the first to make it to twenty-five points in a month. When student’s reached 25 points, we celebrated as a class and acknowledged students at the end of the month.

While it was still necessary to give negative points at times, the positive points began to outweigh the negative. The shifted use of ClassDojo motivated my students and instilled reflection within their learning day. Moreover, parents were much more excited about their child’s progress and ultimately more supportive of me as a teacher!

I always knew that reflection was an important part of being an excellent teacher. I teach reflection to my students when I pass back a test, essay, or other assessment. I stress the importance of it and I’m disappointed when my students don’t take it seriously. Harvard’s Business School hails the importance of reflective practice. Education gurus have written about it for decades. I always thought of myself as a reflective teacher, but last year I realized that I really don’t reflect too often. I was more of an, “I’ll do that differently next year!” type of teacher. Then next year rolled around and I forgot.

Last year I got in the habit of reflecting every day. Even if it was only for 10 minutes right after school, I made sure to reflect. I use PowerPoint almost every day during my instruction, so I decided to reflect by taking notes in the PowerPoint notes section. I would write what I would change about the lesson for next year. If I had time I would even tweak the presentation itself. Sometimes I would pull up handouts on my computer, make a few adjustments, and write a quick note in my planner. It never took me more than 10-15 minutes and was an investment that really paid off!

My 8th grade team meets as a group twice a week, giving us an opportunity to reflect on our practice with each other. If you are not given weekly collaborative time at your school, find someone in your content area to meet with regularly. Start the conversation in a safe place and reflect on the areas of your instruction that are working and areas that aren’t. For example, l was having a hard time teaching complex sentence structures to several students. After reflecting on this issue and talking with another teacher, she suggested an alternative way to approach the situation, and it worked! The experience of admitting you need help can be incredibly humbling and ultimately will help your students succeed.

There are many procedural-type of tools that teachers pick up throughout the year. Some of them are easy to implement at different types of the year, while some of them require a fresh start. I have a document titled “Do This Next Year”, where I keep a running tab of all the great things I want to try a bit differently. For example, I learned a great technique for forming student groups by giving each group a color and each desk a number of 1-4 , both noted by a sticker on the top right corner of the desk. This would allow me to group students in a variety of ways simply by saying “Get into your color groups. 1’s come up and get the papers…” This would work for an endless amount of activities. Though I adopted parts of it, the entire procedure was too much to implement in April. Into the list it went!

Reflecting is an investment that is well worth the time. It will improve your practice, professional growth, and most importantly, student achievement.

Over the years, I have worked with students of different cultural, socioeconomic, and academic backgrounds. One year I taught at one of Philadelphia’s most challenging schools with one of the lowest teacher-retention rates. Violence, poverty, and failing scores gave the school a negative reputation in the community. I quickly discovered that most of my colleagues were burnt out and expected behavior problems and poor performance. I was assigned a class of 32 below-level students without any special education, language, or behavior support.

Given the situation, how should a teacher envision the year ahead? Should a teacher expect every lesson to be interrupted with behavior problems? Should a teacher expect that no child will pass the state test? I refused to accept that the situation was out of my control.

I focused on attaining quality academic and behavioral performance from each student. I consistently set high, yet achievable, expectations and didn’t back down. These expectations were continually communicated with students and families. We celebrated growth, successes, and even attendance on a daily basis. The kids felt accountable knowing there would always be follow-through.

After the first trimester other staff members began to notice a dramatic, positive change in this class. By March my students were exhibiting record gains on the Benchmark Assessment.

Although I may not be a better or more experienced teacher, I believe I approached the year much differently than my colleagues. Preconceived notions did not dictate my school year. Past performance is certainly beneficial information to have, but this information should not be used to place students in a box. Rather, one should use this information to motivate students appropriately and raise the bar whenever possible. Instruction must be differentiated to meet cultural, academic, language, and learning style needs. However, the definition of quality must remain the same and shouldn’t waiver between student populations.

How do you set expectations for your students? Would love to hear your ideas!

At Sacred Heart School in Atherton, the “Code of the Heart” is a set of soft skills that all grades are expected to internalize and incorporate with academic skills. Characteristics of readiness, responsibility, respect and caring share equal emphasis on importance as academic performance. To this end, Mayrin Bunyagidj, a Sacred Heart first grade teacher uses ClassDojo to encourage her students for demonstrating the Code of the Heart aspects of character development. “Seeing and hearing specific comments about their character help my students to become more empathetic with their peers,” says Bunyagidj.

Watch more “Ideas for the Classroom“ to uncover other great ways teachers incorporate ClassDojo into their workflow.

Sonya Castillo is a bilingual 5th grade teacher teacher at Jefferson Elementary in San Leandro. Castillo tracks in-class participation with the ultimate goal of helping students understand how their goals are self-driven and self-motivated. Using ClassDojo, Sonya can customize feedback to be highly relevant to her classroom needs. She selects behaviors that help her students become more self-reflective. Also, she writes the behaviors in Spanish, enabling Castillo’s native-speaking families to check-in from a device or a home computer to see how their students are improving and participating. The specificity of her feedback also makes parent/ teacher conferences substantially more informative.

Watch more “Ideas for the Classroom“ to uncover other great ways teachers incorporate ClassDojo into their workflow.

Positive Behavior Intervention and Support specialist Paul Callis uses ClassDojo to help special education students build their confidence as learners. Callis, who supports students between 6th and 12th grade at the Coliseum College Prep Academy in Oakland, says his students usually need to work to build back some lost self-esteem before they can tackle more rigorous academic matters. Once the students feel valued and successful, Callis can begin to get through to their potential. “That’s when the work comes in. First, to get them onto grade level, they need to be in a positive place,” he adds. Using ClassDojo, Callis looks for ways to reinforce the positive trajectory he and his students are building. This reinforcement creates a virtuous circle of self confident students who help one another, are punctual and prepared.

Watch more “Ideas for the Classroom“ to uncover other great ways teachers incorporate ClassDojo into their workflow.

Evan Wolkenstein of Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco takes a telescopic view in his use of ClassDojo. He works backward from his desired outcome, asking the question “What kind of people do I want my students to be at the end of the year?” Wolkenstein’s 10th through 12th grade classroom is a place to not only learn material, but to learn great interpersonal skills for life. Evan believes one of the ways to bring this about is through cultivating active listening skills. Understanding the core concept — or the most important idea — of what you are hearing someone else say, builds the ability to reflect. Wolkenstein records instances when he observes his students’ applying this skill, and he rewards them for building on this somewhat ineffable quality. “The goal is listening to understand,” adds Wolkenstein. “The ClassDojo tool trains me as well; it helps me to remember what’s important to me.”

Hear more details on how Evan uses ClassDojo in his high school classroom:

Find more “Ideas from the Classroom” from other teachers, and see how you might be able to adopt new approaches to using ClassDojo 🙂

Miranda Hanson, a teacher at Travis Elementary School on Travis Air Force Base says ClassDojo helped her become a more positive teacher, and preventing her from only focusing on students who “act up”. Hanson focuses on conveying her expectations for good conduct with the visual interface of ClassDojo, and customizing behaviors to those important to her classroom. The visual cues help students understand the kind of behaviors she is looking for. By encouraging the good behaviors in children, other children strive to learn the same to receive positive encouragement as well! The students now even compete with one another to be the “Player of the day.” Watch more about Maranda Hanson’s use of ClassDojo:

Hear other teachers who use ClassDojo share their “Ideas for the Classroom” to improve motivation, classroom management, and student encouragement.

Kaytlyn Flynn of St. Joseph Elementary School in Alameda, CA finds ClassDojo an effective tool for easing the transition time between subjects. Flynn gives positive points to students for preparing for the next subject quickly and efficiently without stalling. Similar to Maranda Hanson’s students, Flynn’s students thrive on the competition of positive point rewards. When one student is rewarded for preparing quickly, the rest of the students then follow suit. Overall, “this cut the transition time in half,” says Flynn. Watch Kaytlyn share more details on how she reduced her transition times:

Hear from other teachers like Kaytlyn on how they used ClassDojo improve the classroom environment through student motivation!