Using Class Dojo in the Classroom

Yup, that’s the kind of week it’s been.

I feel like I don’t even have to explain because teachers seem to just get it. I can sense all of you nodding your heads in agreement. When another teacher asks if it’s a full moon, we all know what they mean!

 Moving on (with my adult beverage in hand)… As you may have read before, I started using the App “Class Dojo” this year. It’s going pretty well but I felt my kids really needed a visual reminder for how they were doing and what they are working towards. I was displaying it on the Smartboard but then this happened:

(I’ve affectionately called this the green screen of death)

Uh huh. That’s what my projector was doing today.  I has a sad.

Luckily our IT department works rather quickly so it shouldn’t be too long before I’m all fixed up again!

So back to my class dojo.  I decided they needed a visual reminder so I made this:

I realized after I got home tonight that I forgot to put up Level 125 so I’ll do that on Monday.  Right now when the students reach each level they get to visit my treasure box for a prize.  When everyone gets to the bottom image with the monsters partying it up, we get a class celebration!

The kids were crazy about this idea!  I called them the Dojo Masters and it was an immediate hook for my boys.  One boy said, “It’s kind of like a video game with different levels”. And then during writing time they all wrote about being Dojo Masters.  It was so cute!

I got the graphics to make my board from the Class Dojo website. And then I just made the headers for the levels and the “Dojo Masters” header. I laminated all the little monsters and put each students name on it.  I use magnetic tape on the back so we can easily move this set up to wherever I want it on my white board (and the custodians will be happy that I didn’t use tape).

We made it to 20 mins of stamina this week (FINALLY) for read to self and read to someone.  Next week we will start into the regular rotations for daily 5.  The kids are really pumped about being able to choose where they are going.

We also started working on our social studies unit this week.  My second graders are learning about traditions and celebrations.  I started by giving them a piece of chart paper with the word, “celebrations” printed in the middle. Then I asked them to just write all the things they know about celebrations.

After they were finished we shared their charts and talked about what a celebration is.

Our class dojo celebration will fit right into this! In fact I am going to have them plan out what our Dojo party will look like!

And to end off my week I finished a little booklet that my firsties are going to work on for their unit on Rules and Responsibilities. They are learning about the different roles that people play at home, at school/work and in the community and the differences in their responsibilities.  Here are a couple sample pages, if you click on the images it will take you to my store if you would like more information about it:

Those are 5 random things from my week! I’m linking up with Doodle Bugs, check out her blog to read about everyone else’s week!