Class Dojo!!! It is Awesome!!

I really enjoyed blogging through the summer.  As soon as school started....well, if you are a teacher you understand.  I must hand it to the teachers that can keep up with it all.  Common Core changes have really kept us busy at our school.

But here is what I want to share:
An awesome website that could be the answer to every teachers problem in dealing with classroom behavior!

Class Dojo:  Great Classroom Behavior Manager

It is a totally free website.  Setting your class up is simple.  You can assign students a private number where they can go home and change what their avatar looks like.  The next day, the class can see their new avatar. The students love it!

Another perk of Class Dojo is the fact that parents can check behavior daily via phone or computer.  The parents can see the percentage of positive and negative dojo's students receive.  Class dojo even individualizes behavior so parents can see why the child has negative dojo's . Examples include, disruptive, unprepared, etc...). You can also add your own behavior tags to personalize it to your classroom.  Another great thing is that you can leave comments to parents on what specifically the child did to receive a negative or positive dojo.  This is great for documentation purposes.  I can use it on my projector and keep it on my whiteboard when I am not using the projector for anything else.  If I am using my projector or Mimio, I can easily click on the Dojo window that is open and bring it up to add or take away dojo's.  When giving positive and negative dojo's, Class Dojo gives a postive and negative sound to go along with the dojo.  If students get loud in the classroom, I immediately start giving postive dojo's to students who are on task and the students get quiet immediately.

One of my main concerns was how to keep up with dojo's when students were in the hall, cafeteria, etc...Dojo can do this also.  If you have a cellphone, you can pull the website up and as you add or take away dojo's from your phone, it keeps up with it on the website.  When student's return they can see if their dojo's have increased or decreased.  I usually tell them in the hall, "That is a positive Dojo for Sally for walking quietly in line." or "Joe, you get a negative dojo for talking in the hall and being out of line".

We have worked out a reward system.  When a child gets to 10 dojo's per day they are rewarded with a prize, if they get 50 in a week, they get a larger prize on Friday.  

The students love it and I have seen a lot of them work hard to get their dojo's.

The parent's love it because they can see how their child behaves through out the day and see comments on behavior.

Teacher's love it because it is great documentation when behavior arises that must be dealt with on an administrative level.  (Reports can be printed and sent with the child if child is sent to the office.)  It also shows students immediate rewards or consequences and brings them back to being on task without me having to say a word.  

If you have any questions or problems when you start using Class Dojo, because how can you not start using it, emailing the owners of Class Dojo from their website has always been a positive experience for me.