welcome to my dojo {a tutorial}

ok, have you heard of Class Dojo and just didn’t feel up to it? Dive on in! The water is fine! I heard about the online management tool last year from a fellow teach who thought it would be up my alley. I was reluctant. I liked my card flipping. I didn’t do it.

this year. I was all set for clip chart with my Whole Brain teaching scoreboard. Used scoreboard very successfully the first 2 weeks on school. I planned on adding more individual management with my clip chart {or practice cards} the coming Monday. Threatened rowdy students with it!

Then my middle Lamb comes in after school and says “why aren’t you using class dojo? Your kids would be better if you did!” {my kiddos are great fyi-he just wants to be better than us!}

Then at our staff meeting, my teammate {who had been using it all year and is my son’s teacher} presented it to us. I was hooked! Oh.EM.GEE. The number one feature that got me was the parent reports. Ugh. Can I tell you I hate writing behavior reports in our Thursday folders! I have just slopped something down since I write anything major in the daily planners. Just a waste of my time.

Here’s a little rundown for you. I am sorry it’s not a catchy, appealing video tutorial. I still am not sure where CamStudio saves my stuff…

go to classdojo.com

here’s my class

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Now for the management during class. Little Jake is grabs his book box and gets to reading at his own little spot right away. I need to let him know I noticed because the rest of the kiddos are still roaming around.

 

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not that it ever happens, but if little Jake wasn’t following directions, I’d just go to negative instead.

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and here’s what’s on my tv screen. DING is the positive sound. Enter the Pavlov dog experiment period. Serious;y, everyone is on task now and I never said a word. My fear with this was that I want kids to physically go and MOVE something positive or negative. That’s why I like clip charts and flipping. But I can still get that! I can have kids award positives for themselves, or negatives. They just go and click the mouse.

Now for the reports. I use 2 at the moment. First is the class report I share daily with students. If we beat the number of positives from the previous day, we earn a paw. {our mascot is a bear cub-We are a PBIS school and we have to hand these out schoolwide for good behaviors}

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but I can also print or email individual reports to parents!! yay!! I can add daily notes too if I want

 

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But the BEST feature BY FAR is using my iPhone as a remote! Holy smokes!

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the first day I used it I was in the hallway as they were unpacking. Suddenly they hear the dreaded DONG on the negative…all eyes are sweeping the room. How’d she do that??? I shared that my phone is right here with me all day, I can award from the restroom, cafeteria, lab, hall, anywhere! If I’m in the room, they see it on the screen, if we are out of the room, they notice their totals. They are very focused on these.

and fyi-you must be in IE on your PC to get the smartphone remote to work. Who knows. quirky technology!

Here’s what it looks like

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Why? Every other Friday, they buy coupons with their points.

Our first store is tomorrow. Points will be cleared and spent. I am using Christie’s prize pass catalog because they are not tangible items I have to buy and they love them. We added a few specific things, too. Nothing is over 30 points or under 10. I am choosing to clear them out because I do not want them to get to 30 and just quit.

And my parents love it too. They can {and do} go online anytime and see what’s up.

well, I hope I have at least convinced you to visit the site, or even give it a try! And I am still using wbt rules and other features. I normally stop using scoreboard in September anyhow.

Happy managing!!

currently spetember and a giveaway!

I sadly missed out on currently last month, so I left work early today to get it done. Ok, really to let the garage door repairman in…
linking up with Farley-you need to too!

In my head
some explanations:
believe it or not, I just bought my first music on iTunes. I kinda boycotted avoided it, but gave in when I got the email for the B2S 7.99 albums. I heard that darned Hey Ho by The Lumineers and cannot for the life of me get it out of my head. Now if I can only figure out how to get it to play. I swear I am tech savvy, but iTunes and Apple in general give me fits!
I have some freakin’ awesome kids this year. I should give them more credit and in all actuality this should say loving Class Dojo. More on that gem tomorrow!
weight gain, bloating, breakouts, headaches, exhaustion. I am hoping it some sort of hormonal breakdown and not anything else that shall not be mentioned. I really need to get to the doc and get this figured out! Unfortunately Fortunately {not sure which} my doctor’s kiddo is in my class this year! Kinda weird you know.
I really want a new laptop. Nothing spectacular, just newer. I told Mr. Lamb mine’s been acting up. That this baby makes us extra money. That I have to click 50 times to get a link to work. He says it’s just my mouse…errr
favs. I love shows about things I am not. I am a freak about Breaking Bad, but I’m like “Pinkman, who?” since I watched Sons. Mr. Lamb and I finished up season 3 on Netflix yesterday. sheesh. drool, What is it about a dirty guy on a Harley. I tell hubby that we just like guys like Jax, not marry them!! And ever since we started watching, guess who wants a bike…??? It’s not me!
thanks to some ah-ma-zing feedback from my Process Skills pack!
Thinking I will give it away to the first two people who can guess come closest to the estimate for a new garage opener motor I was quoted today! I will send it to you tomorrow!

teaching process skills with junk! and a freebie

for the past week and a half my kiddos have been playing with bowls of junk from the world of my closet! old hair bows, pieces of sponge, shells, pipe cleaner, snap cubes, clothespins, you know all the junk we collect though the years!

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I have seriously had these ol’ bowls for the past 9 years-with the same stuff in them! {minus the gum cause it loses a little something after awhile}. Initially my teammie and I taught process skills to our 4th graders with this stuff. Later I used them for teaching about characteristics of matter to my 2nd graders.

Well, I broke them out again and we learned all about the process skills in science. I honestly forget I have them until they topple over on my head.

We’ve had a blast and it was all free! We will begin our first unit, my fav MATTER!, this week. My grade level decided we should teach the process skills prior to our first unit to get the kids in the right frame of mind. So, I took what we used with our 4th graders, edited it for wee ones, cutesyified it, and believe it or not-changed some of the skills because someone decided science has changed in the past decade!

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for whatever reason, the wording on this thing was a beast! I had Mr. Lamb listening to me read sentences several times to help with sentence structure. See-real world applications! Here’s some of the unit in action plus there is a freebie at the end of the post!

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some observation-students choose one item to observe and share about {communication}

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here’s some classifying! Shoo!

And here’s the freebie! Classifying with shoes. It’s nothing new, but it is always a hit! click to download. I may add a little assessment later on, so I’ll let you know!

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and in other news, if you’ve emailed me in the past, ol week or so, sorry I haven’t responded! about a month ago we decided to build a new home, put ours up for sale and stay at my mom’s empty house. Well, we moved out {somewhat} and are now at her house. It took maybe a day for Mr. Lamb to decide he missed living less than a minute from work and 10 minutes to get anywhere else! So it looks like we will be renovating and heading back home in a few months.

in the meantime, outside of the city limits we have some new neighbors! right in the backyard!

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