As a teacher, I am always trying to improve my behavior management. This is especially important in a self-contained special education room. I thought that I’d share something that I have been using for a few years now. It’s an app called Class Dojo. It’s available for iPhones, iPads, androids, PCs, and Macs .
It’s basically used to manage behavior. Think of it as an electronic ticket system. As the teacher, you choose which positive behaviors to reward, and which negative behaviors you would like to take note off. So, instead of carrying paper tickets around all day, simply use your phone or iPad, or even the class computer to give out electronic tickets.
The students love it too! They love to see how many tickets they can accumulate and they love to hear the reward sound whenever they get a ticket. It is a great motivational tool for the students. Also, parents can get the app and check on how their child is doing during the school day.
But what I really love is that it accumulates data on all positive/negative behaviors, and with all this new APPR, Common Core, isn’t this what they keep on talking about? Data, data, data! “They” want data for this and data for that, well here it is! This data is great for teachers. It can be used in case you need data to bring a student to IST, or to request a behavior consultant, or even if teachers what to evaluate themselves, to assess whether they need to change their behavior plans/management or not, but it’s also great to use for parents- it gives a clearer picture for the parents to see what their child is doing in class.
In the last couple of years, they’ve also added some great features. For example, as long as parents “connect” to Class Dojo, the parents and teacher can privately correspond via Class Dojo ( similar to a text). This can be a great way to correspond, because there will be a log of every time and everything you corresponded about. Another feature recently added is the ability to send photos to parents. I love this feature because parents are always so appreciative of a snapshot of their child in school (which is something they hardly ever get to see!)
Check it out – it’s free. I’m sure you’ll love it and it will make an improvement in your behavior management, as long as you are consistent with this (like in any behavior management plan).
Special Edu-Crafter 