Class Dojo: A Fun FREE Behavior Program for the Classroom

I haven't used Class Dojo all school year, I actually started shortly after returning from an A+ Educator conference in Phoenix, Arizona, where I first heard about www.classdojo.com. Most of my students and I fell instantly in love with Class Dojo. Yes, I did say most! Some students had a hard time adjusting to Class Dojo and even tried to rebell against the system for a while (these are the students who need Class Dojo the most), that is until they realized that they control Class Dojo not the computer and not me. When the students who rebelled against the system realized this, I didn't have any problems with them getting their assignments done, calling out in the middle of class, and being a disruption in the classroom. Trust me give it two weeks and you will be hooked, if not on the first day.

Class Dojo is really easy to set up. You put in your students, make some modifications on the behavior points, and maybe you are feeling really good and decide to pick out little avatar monsters for each one of your students. If you are lazy like me, you just leave the ones that the website picks. Really, why make extra work for yourself? 

Now, you are ready to begin the day with Class Dojo. I open up my class on the website and project it using my Activboard in the classroom, this way all the students can see their little avatars and their positive and negative points. Throughout the day, I carry my iPad around the classroom and use mobile.classdojo.com as a remote to control the website. This makes it convenient to be anywhere in the classroom and give both positive and negative dojo points to students. Because in order for Class Dojo to really work, you have to be able to control the points at any time or any place, or students will realize that it is okay to cut off if they know you aren't going to take away their dojo points.

At the end of the day, Class Dojo creates these beautiful pie graphs on each of your students that can be emailed out to their parents. Come on, you have to love that! I used to stamp colored dots on calendars and when a child didn't have a good day, write why they received the color they did. Now the chart is easy to email and hey, you don't have to write a long note on the child's behavior the parent can already see that they were talking out, constantly out of their seat, not completing their work, not wearing a proper uniform, etc. Trust me, if you aren't using Class Dojo in your classroom, you should be, it's FREE, teachers love FREE!