ClassDojo - Inquiry
- Nicole Watts
- Nov 14, 2017
- 2 min read
This year my teaching as inquiry cycle has had a focus on classroom management/student engagement. The strategy/tool that I decided to use as an intervention was a website and app called "ClassDojo".
I came across ClassDojo through a YouTube channel that I watch. This channel is a teaching channel where the YouTuber, Michelle, documents her journey as a beginning teacher. She specialises in mathematics and science in elementary schools in America. It has been really useful watching her video's as she too, works in a lower socio-economic area, and her children's learning levels are about the same as my lower level students. Michelle uses ClassDojo for a number of things but mostly she uses it as a behaviour management system. So I wondered if this could work for my Year 9 classes as well.
ClassDojo is really user friendly and aesthetically appealing. Once all of the students names have been entered into the website you can customise their account by changing their avatar (or leave it with the randomly generated ones). It can be used to track classroom behaviour, message parents, or as a social media-esk platform. There are also features on the website that can make teaching a bit easier. For instance, tools for marking attendance, forming random groups, setting tasks, activities timers, and even a noise meter.
When I initially set up ClassDojo, there were positive and needs work behaviours already stored in the system. I left some of those there but decided to create the behaviours with my classes. This meant the students were buying into the system. It also gave them the opportunity to think about behaviour that they like being around or work well with and behaviours that do not work well in the classroom or are distracting for their learning. Suprisingly, I found the class found it easier to fire off the needs work behaviours and I had to prompt a lot for the positive behaviours.
One thing we made sure to include were the five Pehu PRIDE values in the positive section - another way to further reinforce how we should be acting on a school level. We also assigned different point values for the needs work behaviours - 1 point for minor and 2 points for major offences. We decided to leave all positive behaviours on 2 points as we felt that any good behaviour was worthy!
Finally, as a class, we have been setting points goals to reach by certain dates. For example, 9A had to reach 1000 points by the end of Term 3 and we would have a movies and a popcorn day! The buy in for this has been amazing. Students are so eager to accumulate points and are constantly asking for an update. They have become more aware of whether their behaviour is positive or needs work. Consequently, this has had a flow on effect in terms of the engagement in lessons, as a whole. Students who were once un-engaged because of negative distractions are now able to focus a lot more and students who were distracted/misbehaving have increased engagement in most lessons.
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