I have just started my second
year of teaching at a small but very energetic school in South
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I was
lucky enough to complete my graduate internship here in 2010 and this year will
be my second year as a full time qualified teacher. Last year I taught Prep, which is similar to
kindergarten and in 2012 I will teach a multi-age class grade 5/6.
Throughout my years at university
I was always interested in behaviour management strategies and their impact on
students inside and outside of the classroom environment. A big focus for me as a teacher is assisting students
in developing understandings of how their behaviour impacts on others. Last year I decided to work with my students
on understanding and owning their own behaviour. I have the belief that every behaviour a
student displays has a function. You can’t
change behaviour, but you can assist students in developing skills to manage
their own.
Like many teachers, ClassDojo has
assisted me in providing students with a personalised behaviour management
system that provides students with real time feedback on their decisions. In
2011 I implemented ClassDojo half way through the year and saw immediate
changes in my students. (Read my story here http://bit.ly/w5QQwZ).
This year I have the privilege of
being the ICLT Coordinator for my school.
I have worked with the staff at my school to implement ClassDojo right
throughout the school. We discussed as a
staff how the program can assist the behaviour management systems we already
use in our classroom and have worked hard to tailor the program to suit each
individual classroom. So far the
feedback has been very positive.
Here are some of the steps we took when implementing ClassDojo across
the school and in my own classroom.
1. Add the students into the
system and negotiate their Avatars.
This was a great way to talk to students about what they wanted with
their Avatars. We found younger students
loved when their own headshots popped up onto the screen when they got a point. This was very personal to them and assists
them to build ownership of their behaviours.
The older kids seemed to like the monsters. In some classes they even drew their own
Avatars, scanned them into the computer and the teacher uploaded their
creations to ClassDojo. Very
personalised.
2. Negotiate the Positive
and Negative Behaviours.
From the get go we believed as a
staff it was important to negotiate what the positive and negative points were
in each classroom. We found that what
was important in one classroom wasn’t as important in another. We also found that students have a different
perception of behaviours and how we word them.
When we all sat down and discussed with students what they wanted as
positive and negative behaviours in their classroom. We found that they were
very engaged in the process of building their ClassDojo system. Children owning their own behaviour is a very
powerful process to see.
Our Building Behaviours
Negotiating Behaviours is integral if you want students to own their behaviour.
3. We started with Positive points only.
During the first week we
introduced and built the systems in each classroom with our students. As teachers we decided that we would ease
students into the process of real time feedback of their behaviour. We started awarding positive rewards only. Once students were comfortable with the
systems place and function in the classroom we talked with students and began
to award negative points as well as positive points. We found this process assisted students in
beginning to manage their behaviour.
This can be a tough process for children to grasp, but ClassDojo assists
us daily with assisting students in developing the skills to do this.
4. Reflection and Review are
the keys to success.
We are now in week four of Term
1. Most teachers have continually talked
with their students and reviewed the positive and negative behaviours. Some have added more and some have taken some
away. We believe the key to promoting
student ownership of their behaviours is involving them in adapting the system
to suit the needs of their classrooms.
5. Have fun and reward
students for their hard work.
A lot of teachers including
myself have negotiated with students rewards for their hard work. We believe that for students it is a massive
task to own their own behaviour as well as completing every other task we throw
at them throughout the school day. We
have negotiated with them a “cash in” system.
In my class we cash in points for time on the Xbox Kinect on a Friday
afternoon. In Prep they cash in points
for free time in the school playground.
Even though our school year has just begun, ClassDojo is a major part of our schools classrooms. Daily you can hear the sounds of positive points ringing through the hallways. Our biggest success is assisting students in developing the skills to own their behaviours. Watching it happen is a powerful experience, one that I’m very proud to be a part of.
Even though our school year has just begun, ClassDojo is a major part of our schools classrooms. Daily you can hear the sounds of positive points ringing through the hallways. Our biggest success is assisting students in developing the skills to own their behaviours. Watching it happen is a powerful experience, one that I’m very proud to be a part of.
