All week, I’ve been battling the beginnings of a cold. I would go to sleep at night and feel my throat tingle a little – uh oh! So I’ve spent the week drinking vitamin C and taking Cold Effects to great success. Apparently, this morning, my body decided it was done fighting the good fight, and the cold finally hit me.
So the good news is, it’s Sunday – so I’m at home, relaxing, laying in bed … and, obviously, playing on my iPad. Playing on my iPad really just means, for me, looking stuff up for my classroom and catching up on various reports. I’m always trying to find new and innovative ways to bring to bring technology into the classroom, so I cherish those times.
For several weeks, I’ve begun to notice that my behaviour incentive chart has begun to lose its punch. Sure, the points are still effective and the students enjoy spending their points for our classroom incentives, but they are just as happy waiting for the points to go up and down and accumulating them slowly instead of striving to improve behaviours. I’ve tried switching it up: rewarding positively more, having more group incentives, having a “star behaviour” that rewards more points, etc. I just find they’ve become … complacent. So I’ve been searching for something that I could use to shake things up a bit, without having to change my whole strategy.
I’m late to the party, but today, I’ve discovered ClassDojo, so I thought I would give some first impressions of the service before I implement it in my classroom. You know, kind of do a KWL chart … with myself.
What I Know About ClassDojo
What I Want To Know About ClassDojo
I was thinking about spending the week playing with it to see if it is the kind of program for me, and then, if I think I can adapt it to my needs and the needs of my students, I will roll it out in real time next week. I’ll keep you posted!