Weekly Teaching and Learning Email:Using ClassDojo During Tutor Time (Inspired by Miss Faye and 10B)

Dear Colleagues,

I hope everyone is well, it is hard to believe it is almost the end of May. This week the focus is once again on ClassDojo (sorry), and providing some practical tips on how you can reward positive behaviours with your tutor groups and get the day off to a good start.

The latest trend threatening uniform standards

Practical Suggestions

Uniform Checks – On a Monday you can award a point to each student with correct uniform. Miss Faye has done this to great effect and 10B have consistently had excellent standards of uniform. This is particularly useful for challenging the recent trend of black shoes with white soles.

Being On Time – Select a random day each week and award students for being in tutor time before 7:30am. This can help to reduce lates, but there will always be “traffic”!

Award a performance point – If you have tutor activities like a quiz or morning puzzle award a point to the student or students who solve the puzzle. Thunks (A Thunk is a beguilingly simple-looking question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you start to look at the world in a whole new light) are a great way to start a day and get students brains working. http://www.thunks.co.uk/

Speaking English – Great suggestion from Sarah Bond, if she spots an ESL student speaking English with a fellow student she will reward them with a Dojo point.

Student of the Week – By clicking on your tutor group you can quickly review the scores of your tutees. You can then print off the monster of the student who has performed the best and display this on your tutor notice board.

Listening to instructions – If you have a specific routine that requires students to bring additional equipment e.g. silent reading on a particular day, you can reward students who bring reading books with a Dojo point.

Set a target behaviour for the week – For example, select teamwork as the target, then use the “View Report” function in ClassDojo to check which of your tutees achieved the most teamwork points. This can allow a very singular focus on a behaviour that you may feel is lacking for your tutees.

These are just some ideas to help you think about and further develop your own ‘in-house’ reward system. If you have any other strategies that you have tried and tested please comment on the blog post or reply to this email and I will update the post to include your suggestions.

Have a great weekend.

Regards,
Neil

Weekly Teaching and Learning Email - How to Edit Groups

Dear Colleagues,

Just a quick reminder about adding new students to your tutor and class groups and how to remove students who have moved on to pastures new. In order to add/remove students you need to click on your Dojo Group in the relevant Year Group and edit it. See the attached screenshot below. Then you can tick and untick the relevant students and save your updated group. Any questions or problems please email me or come and see me.

Have a great week and thank you once again for your help and support with Class Dojo.

Best regards,

Neil

Weekly Teaching and Learning Email - ClassDojo; Reviewing Points

Dear Colleagues,

I hope this email finds you well and looking forward to celebrating sports day. Just a quick email about how to check student points for previous periods after they have been reset to zero each Friday.

You can view this function through the “View Reports” section which can be found on the right hand side in any Year Group or Groups section (see screenshot below).

This then gives you access to all the students in the Year Group. You can click on the individual student e.g. Akimori as shown below. You can then click on “This week v” and this will open the drop down menu shown below. You can then select which period you would like to review for your individual students. You can also do this for the whole year group and see how your tutees compare with the other students in the Year.  Nothing like a bit of healthy competition.

If you have any suggestions for improvements or ideas please share them on the CPD Blog http://cpdattraillschool.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/classdojo-feedback-and-development.html#comment-form or send me an email.

Regards,
Neil

Weekly Teaching and Learning Email - ClassDojo; when a point isn't enough.

Dear Colleagues,

I hope this email finds you well.  Just a quick email about how to add comments when you feel a student deserves a little bit more recognition for the excellent behaviours they have been displaying.

You can add comments through the “View Reports” section which can be found on the right hand side in any Year Group or Groups section (see screenshot below).

This then gives you access to all the students in the Year Group.  You can click on the individual student and this will allow you to “Add Note”.  In this box you can then provide an additional comment for students and parents to view.

If you have any suggestions for improvements or ideas please share them on the CPD Blog or http://cpdattraillschool.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/classdojo-feedback-and-development.html#comment-form send me an email.

I will be adding a “Winai” button to the behaviours later today which will hopefully help tutors when it comes to writing the next set of reports as they will have some supporting data. Thank to Darryl and Patrick for this suggestion.

Have a great weekend.

Neil

Weekly Teaching and Learning Email - Use of ClassDojo for Tutors and Primary Teachers

Dear Colleagues,

Just a quick reminder; ClassDojo is to be used for POSITIVE BEHAVIOURS ONLY.  Please reward the students that are showing up on time and are handing in homework so the other students then make the choice to be on time and to submit their homework.  I understand that this may paint a false picture of students as they appear to not make mistakes, however, our school policy is to focus on the POSITIVES.

On to how ClassDojo can be used by Tutors and Year Group teachers.

• You can quickly compare student points totals by clicking on your Tutor Group under the relevant Year Group>Groups section.  This could then be tied into a student of the week award.  These points will be reset every week so students will have a new start every week.

• You could also quickly count up the number of points your tutor group has and prepare a weekly chart to review their performance and check for increases and decreases.

• One of the most useful elements relates to the “View Reports” section which can be found on the right hand side in any Year Group or Groups section (see screenshot right).

• This then gives you access to all the students in the Year Group.  You can click on your tutees and see which behaviours they have been rewarded for.  This means you can decide on individual focuses for students based on areas they have yet to receive points in.  This could also prove useful for report writing for tutors.

Once again thank you for all your help and support in launching ClassDojo and helping the students to recognise the positives associated with these behaviours.  If you have any suggestions for improvements or ideas please share them on the CPD Blog http://cpdattraillschool.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/classdojo-feedback-and-development.html#comment-form or send me an email.

Have a great weekend.

Neil

ClassDojo Feedback and Development

6th November 2015,

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for your help and support throughout the ClassDojo training today.  We really appreciate your feedback and the ideas generated.  To continue moving forward: we want to develop these ideas further and would like to use the CPD Blog for this purpose so other teachers can access, share and add their thoughts.  Essentially, sharing all of your brilliant ideas so we all benefit from using what is potentially a very powerful reinforcement tool.  So please add any ideas in the comments below as without your help ClassDojo will not be the success it has the potential to become. 

ClassDojo Launch

26th October

Dear Colleagues,

The purpose of the email this week is to introduce a new behaviour management system (replacing the pink merit cards) that we are launching at Traill.  It is called ClassDojo.  You can find out more at ClassDojo.com by watching the following teacher focused short video:

Your Heads of Faculty will lead a meeting about ClassDojo this Monday, but if you are keen to get started right away and to start rewarding positive behaviours in your classroom then get signed up and get started.  To sign up just follow the instructions below.

Click on the following link: https://www.classdojo.com/en-gb/teacher-signup/?redirect=true and fill in your details on the form below.  Use your SCHOOL EMAIL please and sign up to Traill International School.

If you have already signed up by responding to the invites sent earlier, that is brilliant.

On your home screen you will see invites to the secondary year groups that you teach.  You can click on these year groups and start to reward individual students for their behaviour in class or outside of class if you download the app to your smartphone or tablet.  YOU DO NOT NEED TO SET UP CLASSES.  Each subject teacher will set up groups to separate your class and I will explain this next week during our INSET.  If you want to find out how to do this before then come and see me and I will show you how it is done.

Rewards and the behaviours

To ensure consistency for points the following behaviours have been added each with an explanation of when to award a point:

Punctuality: Both tutors and class teachers can award students a point for being on time.  Hopefully this will encourage our late comers to hurry their parents along in a morning and ensure books and equipment are collected during morning, break and lunch!

Uniform & Kit: This refers to presentation, appearance, black shoes and most importantly, for Mr Lee, students bringing the correct kit to P.E.

Speaking English: Students have the temptation to slip back into their mother tongue so you can reward those students who resist the temptation and communicate in English as per the school policy.  Obviously in French, Mandarin, Japanese or Thai this may not be relevant but if they are speaking in the correct language you could award a participation or effort point depending on the context.

Homework: If students submit their homework on time and it is completed to the satisfactory standard you can award a point.

Good Question: To encourage students to ask more questions you can award a point to encourage them to think independently and challenge what is being said.

Participation: If a student is working well in your subject you can award a participation point, or if they volunteer to answer a question, working well in a team or as a pair then you can give them a participation point.  This can include being focused on the task.

Effort:  If a student is putting in 100% to a task and may not be getting the correct answers you can reward them for effort.  It may also be comparative to a previous lesson and you recognise they are working much harder and want to reward that.  This could also be extended to homework when students have clearly worked to the best of their ability.

Listening to instructions: This is particularly important in science practical, P.E. and more complex group work and tasks.  If you notice that some students are paying particular attention remember to reward them after you have delivered your instructions.

Proactive Learner: This is when a student takes the initiative, goes beyond expectations with homework or research in class, helps others in the class or during a group task or any other instance when students get on with it rather than waiting for your help.

Performance: If a student scores well on a test, beats a personal best, meets a target set from previous work this could be used to reward them.

When giving a point please try to pick the behaviour that best reflects the achievement of the student.  There may be some instances when 2 points may be relevant, for example if a student completes a homework and this homework then exceeds the previous target set.  Please feel free to reward 2 points.  The above are intended as guidelines so there is some level of consistency across the school when we are rewarding students.

The accumulated points will be added on to the House System to encourage all students to buy into the system and feel that they can really help their house to the trophy at the end of the year.

Please let me know if you have any problems or concerns about using ClassDojo.  Thank you for your help in making ClassDojo a success and encouraging our students to push themselves further.  Have a great week.

ClassDojo

9th October,

Dear Colleagues,

I hope everyone has had a good week. Just a short email this week to quickly present ClassDojo which we will be introducing after half term across our school.

 

Here are some ideas from Pinterest on how ClassDojo can be used in the classroom to get you thinking about how we can make the most of it.

https://uk.pinterest.com/explore/class-dojo/

https://uk.pinterest.com/classdojo/teacher-blogs-about-classdojo/

Thank you for watching, reading and researching. Have a great weekend.

Neil