Do You Dojo?

So, today I was at a meeting where our ELA committee was working on creating some units to use when teaching common core standards next year. While we were discussing what to include in this unit for first quarter, somehow one of the teachers mentioned how she used Class Dojo in her room for behavior management. Now, I had never seen this program in action and as she was showing us, I must admit I was a little jealous that I didn't personally stumble on this little beauty!



Let me tell you how it works, in case you are like me and haven't seen this puppy in action yet! On the website Class Dojo you input all your students' names and assign them an avatar or upload their photos. Then you choose which behaviors you want to use both positive and negative. I used the clip chart this year, so I chose behaviors that I would typically move clips up or down for. Such as, being respectful, participating, staying focused, or on the negative side something like being disrespectful, disruption, or getting out of their seat.





Once everything is set up online you can also add the app to your smart phone and you can award points or take them away from your computer or from your phone. So you can Dojo wherever you Go-go! Lol  I plan to use this next year and will just keep it open on my ENO board all day and minimize it if we are doing something else. It "dings" when you award positive points and "buzzes" if you take away a point for a negative. When the students hear the ding or buzz they are automatically paying attention to see who it is and make sure they don't get buzzed.

The best part of all this is that it keeps the data in the form of a report card so you can easily look back at what their behavior has been like over a period of time. Also, my friend who uses this said she lets the student with the most points for the day choose a coupon from her jar. They say things like sit in the teachers' chair, get a free pencil, take the line leader job, etc.

 I am really excited to give this a try next year. Let me know if you Dojo in your room and if so how do you reward your kiddos?