Awesome FREE Classroom Management Tool

I've got to share an awesome tool that I have used consistently for the past year: CLASS DOJO.  This is truly an excellent behavior management tool to use in your classroom.  All you have to do is go to www.classdojo.com and set up your class.  Then you can award points for positive behaviors right there on the computer screen or from an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad from all the way across the room.  Picture this: I have Class Dojo up on the computer screen.  I have it projected onto the ActivBoard.  I'm working with small groups.  Little Sally is staying on task, reading a "just right" book, and following expectations.  Without stopping my small group instruction, I simply touch her name (or avatar) on the iPad and give her a point for good behavior.  The class is alerted with an audible tone and Sally is all smiles!  Little Johnny quickly decides he wants a point too and begins reading his book rather than flicking pencils across the room at his neighbor.  Instruction is uninterrupted and all students are back on task.  Brilliant!  This is what it looks like on the screen:

Now, you can award negative points that will make a different sound and subtract points away from a student, but we are a PBIS school and choose to reward positive behaviors instead.  But it's there should you choose to use it.  I will add that, at times, you might not want the audible tone, so you can turn that feature off or just turn the volume down.

At the end of the day or week, I reward the students with the most points or the students who met their behavioral goal (great for point charts or behavioral IEPs).  It truly works!  You can also print behavior reports daily or weekly to send home to parents.  Instant documentation!

I have had this on my blog list to blog about forever ago and never got around to it, but the email I received this morning told me, "Jamie, you've got to share this!"  Class Dojo just got even better!  You can now use Class Dojo to keep track of and take attendance.  The students (or you) can take attendance using this website and print the attendance reports with the behavior reports.  Awesome!  

This is the video included in the email detailing the attendance feature:

If you have any questions about how Class Dojo works, feel free to leave a comment below OR if you have used Dojo and think it ROCKS like I do, leave a comment telling me how you've used it in your classroom.

FYI: I have no connection to Class Dojo and they are not paying me to blog about this program.  I just love it and wanted to share it with all of my teacher friends :)  Have a great week everybody!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

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Clutter-Free Classroom Project Linky Party

I am linking up with Clutter-Free Classroom to participate in a Linky Party all about being clutter-free and organized in your classroom!  As part of the Week 1 Challenge, I took pictures of my classroom to serve as my "before" pictures.  Please excuse the mess and keep in mind that these pictures were taken the night before the first day back from Christmas break.  I think my room is still recovering from that last week before break :)

 I like the picture above of my classroom library.  I like the look of my baskets, but I have made label after label after label after label {you get my point} and am never satisfied with my labels for my baskets.  We use Accelerated Reader at my school so my books are all organized by AR level.  To appease myself, this summer I simply made very small labels to go at the very bottom of my book baskets.  They are doing the job, but are not the cutest.  This is on my to-do list: to find or create labels for my book basket bins.

This is where I keep my work stations.  Math work stations are in the 10 drawers to the left which always {and I mean always} come off the track and get shoved in anyway.  Does anyone else have this problem with these drawers?  The clear bins to the right house my literacy work stations.  While I do love the clear bins and the black bookshelf, obviously the bins do not fit in the bookshelf.  They are too long.  This really really irks me.  Is irks a word and did I spell it correctly?  Hmm..

This is my reading focus wall.  I put my own spin on this focus wall I found on Life in First Grade.  I love, love, love the pink and green.  The cute little beach chairs are a favorite among my students during AR reading time.  You can also get a glimpse of my mini teacher's toolbox on my black shelf.  This was inspired by this one and this one.  I like how it ties in with my pink and lime green theme :)

This is my teacher area.  Notice how I don't have a teacher's desk in the middle of my room or even facing my students?  I saw this idea on many, many blogs this summer - Get Rid of the Teacher Desk!  Well, I didn't get rid of it completely, but I did shove it up against a wall.  I mean, who has time to sit down at their desk during the day with 20+ kids in the room anyway?!  More room for the kids!!  I love this area for me and the extra room for the kids in front of the ActivBoard. Ignore the Target bag.  Every time I go to work in my room on a non-school day I think I walk in with Target Dollar Section Goodies.  Anybody with me? 

The view from the door to the left.  Ignore that big ugly chair as it's fixing to go to storage too! 

The view from the door to the right.  Do you guys go through as much hand sanitizer as I do?  Notice the economy-size bottle on the small group table. 

The view from the front to the back. 

The view from the other side of the room to my door.  Again, that ugly chair has GOT to go!  I love the Mac computers in our school.  Don't they look just awesome {insert Mac geek comments here}. 

Ahhh, this makes me smile.  I love, love, love my crate seats.  Inspired by Pinterest, created by my husband.  An afternoon project this summer that was so much fun.  My kiddos love sitting at them during small group time.  See the original post about these here.

This is the book shelf by my desk that houses all of my teacher materials and my favorite thing in the world - my BINDERS!  Notice how everything has a label...typed.  My materials are also grouped by content area and grade level as I have materials that span from 1st to 4th.

So that's my "before" pictures.  It's not quite as bad as I had expected, but I always seem to want to change it up a bit and re-organize.  What do you think?

To see other bloggers "before" pictures follow the button below to join the Linky Party.

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