Dojo for your mojo...

Okay everyone, so throughout my first year of teaching I have been introduced to and inspired by tons of fellow teachers through blogs, TPT, and Pinterest. I can get online and read and look around for hours at all the wonderful ideas out there. With that being said, I have decided to give a go at it myself and share with the world or really anyone who wants to read my ideas or things I'm trying in the classroom. Although I am sure a lot of my posts will mostly be about teaching because it's such a huge part of my life, I also hope to write about my life adventures as well! Thanks for reading and feel free to share the love!

Right around Spring Break I could tell my normal classroom management system just wasn't working as well as it had the first half of the year. I was becoming easily frustrated and losing patience quickly with my students because they just weren't behaving like I knew they could. Then I was introduced to Class Dojo during one of my new teacher workshops.

I knew right away this type of change was exactly what I needed! Now, I'm sure a lot of you have heard of DoJo before, but this was the first time I had even heard of it and I immediately knew I wanted to give it a shot. It is basically an online point system that the teacher uses to reward students for good behavior and deduct points for poor behavior. On the website each student receives their own "dojo" which is a silly looking little avatar. Before introducing it to my class I came up with a few ways to integrate it into my management system already in place to help motivate students to want to earn points. For example, I told them that everyday their goal was to get 10 points and if they reached 50 points by the end of the week they would relieve 5 "chimp change" to use at the treasure box on Friday. (We are the Chapman Chimpanzees so chimp change is our form of tickets or tokens.) I also told my kiddos that they could receive points for getting a 100 on their math, spelling, vocab, and DOL quizzes.

Little did I know I probably didn't even need to integrate the points in this way because as soon as I introduced it to my Chimps they immediately fell in love with it and became the perfect little angels I knew they could be. Ever since I started using Dojo our transitions have been faster, we've had much more time to learn, and the kids started treating me and each other better.

Anyways, there is a lot to learn about Class Dojo and it is pretty self explanatory once you get on the website and browse around. Here are a few of my favorite things about it...

1) Simplicity of being able to give or take away a point and take note of why the student was rewarded/reprimanded with just the click of a button. I keep Class Dojo up on my computer, smart board, and iPad almost the whole day so it is always within reach when I need it. Even the kids can give or take away points from themselves if I have it up on the smart board.

2) The kids can connect at home to change their Dojo and see their daily report of how they did that day.

3) Parents can easily connect to see how their student is doing everyday in the classroom. Dojo will even send out a weekly report to all parents every Friday without you having to do anything. This is such a great way for parents to really see how their child is doing and to stay connected with the teacher.

There are tons more features but I'll have to save those for another post because this one I'm sure is already too long. Check out the website at www.classdojo.com!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy using Class Dojo in your room!