Learning is.... Planting a seed in our brain... learning to water, nurture and grow it.... so we can live on the fruit of our learning and plant more seeds.
Showing posts with label behaviour management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label behaviour management. Show all posts
I've been a teacher for nearly twenty-two years, and that is a pretty long time considering we are hemorrhaging teachers at the five year mark in their career. I've mostly taught between Year 3-8 and I am comfortable having multi-leveled classes. As I've said in a previous post, my philosophy was that I did not teach students who did not know how to tie their own shoe laces, pack their own bag, blow their own nose or dress themselves.
Which is why a few people, including myself, are slightly amused to see me as a New Entrant teacher this term.
I decided to go for this role as I really liked the school, the staff and the students, and I thought it was high time I stretched myself professionally and got outside of my comfort zone and learnt how this New Entrant teaching thing was done. Mixed into that, I wanted to explore play based learning as a philosophy.
And boy, am I learning a lot!!
I am the first port of call in teaching these things:
sitting on the mat
not disappearing out the door
coming into class when the bell goes
taking turns
listening and following instructions
how to stick things down
how to use a paint brush without going through the paper
colouring in between the lines
how to cut stuff out
And all of this is before we learn to read or write or master the alphabet!!!
Apart from those old standards of "Walk, don't run" or "Keep your hands to yourself", I've added such stunning phrases to my standard fare as "We don't put the toys/pens/pencils in our mouths" and "Your feet do not go in your lunchbox". I think I talk too much because I am losing my voice every day. For my personal health and safety, I will need to find a way to modify my practice to save my voice.
I'm also having a fast learning curve on Autism too. I've had students with Autism before, but every child is unique and has their own peculiarities, talents, challenges and delights.
I have a wee girl with Autism and sometimes she is willing to do what we are doing and other times I have to try my best to coax her and find ways and means of her wanting to be included. She gets high anxiety. Today it was over a spider being in the girls toilets; the other day it was because a certain person looked at her. Dad and I had a meeting the other week where I let him know the issues happening and got some feedback from him on how they manage the anxiety and other issues at home.
Sometimes I can de-escalate the anxiety; many other times I fail. And now she has a taste for fleeing the class when she does not want to do something. I do not have a teacher aide in the room for her (still doing the paperwork for ORS), so occasionally, when the admin team do not answer their phones, I've had to leave my class on their own to stop her from disappearing down the road.
So I need to find another way of keeping her inside that doesn't include having to have the doors constantly shut. Fencing for the New Entrant/Year One classes won't be done until next year to accommodate another student on ORS funding, who is also a flight risk.
I'm thinking of introducing a safe cave for her as she is light sensitive. But the challenge is in making it a space for her and not having every other child invade it. I'm also thinking of creating a form of recognition for her participating in whole class activities and staying in class. I've set up a similar one for two other students who sometimes struggle to show respect and participate appropriately.
Each row represents first, middle and third blocks of learning. The first box in each block is mat time. The second box covers any activities we do and Play Exploration time. The third box covers packing up time. If I get no issues, the child gets a star for their box. The child gets a verbal warning if an undesirable behaviour happens. If the behaviour is repeated, the child receives a dot under the box. If no further warnings happen, they get half a star for that time. If they get a second dot, there is no star for that time. If they get four dots they go to time out in another room. I photograph this each day as a record. One child's parent is emailed the photo each day as she wants to monitor in-school behaviour to ensure learning progress can happen.
So I am thinking of adapting this to my wee girl. A box for mat time, a box for doing the activity, a box for tidying up (she hates that time the most), and a fourth box for staying in the classroom. Now to put it into action!
The ORS student is in my room too. I've had an ORS student previously, but again, each one is an individual and has their own challenges and delights. This student is non-verbal and it is a challenge to find a way to include him into class activities as he is functioning at such a low level intellectually.
I want to explore how we can provide the best learning for this boy as he will never be in a position to participate at any level in a mainstream programme, I feel that I am not quite equipped to provide what he needs, and neither is the school (despite doing its very best to provide spaces and personnel and support to all involved) even with a special school teacher onsite three mornings a week. So I want to explore what other options are available to him to grow the potential he possibly has while allowing him to attend a mainstream school as his family wish for him. So I'd really value any suggestions in the comments.
Over the last few weeks, I've had my CRT days. This has been really valuable for me. I've learned about the testing at this level that I've never had to do with older children. JAM, for example, is new to me, as is how to administer and assess Marie Clay's Letter Identification and Dictation tasks.
But it has also given me the chance to spend time one-on-one with each child and talk to them and learn where they are at, what they know, what their gaps are. This is great because it then means I have to up my game and change how I do things, tweak stuff, to ensure they are clicking with the alphabet and numbers and sight words and so on. So I've spent a bit of time talking to the teacher in the next room and my cousin, the RTLit, on how I can do things a wee bit better.
Every day is a learning curve. What happened well yesterday or this morning may not work during the next block. The children reacted poorly to hot weather last week and were like wilting plants in the afternoon blocks with barely the energy to sit. This has been another added challenge and something to consider when planning the day.
I am sure that the next two weeks and four days will bring further lessons for me as the teacher.
I am now two weeks into being a New Entrant teacher and what have I learned?
I am bone tired shattered at the end of each day!! Guaranteed I will have a kip in the chair in front of the telly each night and that I will come home full on Zombie-like due to the need to be hyper-aware all day. My old principal Bob used to say, if you are not dead on your feet on a Friday night as a teacher, then you are not doing it properly. But I am also going to say that after seven terms as a relief teacher, I'm not match fit for full time teaching yet; I need to rebuild my stamina.
As I stated in my blog two weeks ago, It's Term Four and I'm freaking out!!!, I am going with a play based philosophy in this class due to a number of children with low oral language and the need to build relationships. There have been times when I have felt a bit redundant or fraudulent, and consequently I've had to push myself to make interactions with the children by engaging in play myself. This is something I will need to make myself do more: get lost in the play.
I have found that this is also useful for when I have needed to do things one-on-one with students. They are playing and I can call up the one I need and know that (theoretically) all the others are engaged meaningfully.
After having the equipment for two weeks, I'm finding some students are getting 'bored' and so I have held back a couple of things and I will endeavour to introduced them over the next couple of weeks to re-inject the interest in play that is waning.
But I also think I need to introduce more structured play and some literacy and numeracy activities because I'm thinking some children may be needing more of this. How I do this is my next big challenge.
Sometimes, at certain times, I feel like the Count. And then other times I have them in the palm of my hand. That's teaching!!
I also have a couple of lads who are challenging me with their behaviour. One thing I did not miss as a reliever was the feeling of constantly repeating myself to the same students day after day for pretty much the same behaviour. I am now working with the families to be able to report back about how this behaviour is being managed and how we will change it. That's a work in progress that could be reported on in a future blog.
We have been successful with a few key things:
we are really good at packing up our toys and activities.
we are getting better at asking to go out to the toilet and to put things in our bags or to get a drink.
we are learning to read the shared big books together and do alphabet and sight words.
we are improving with learning the days of the week.
we all know that each hand has five fingers and thumbs and the Slavic abacus has five of one colour and five of another colour on each row and we are great at counting to 20 on the abacus.
we are making some awesome art
We made these awesome bears below because we were focusing on the letter B. We also went out to blow bubbles for the letter B and wrote some stories to go with the photos.
We also made bees for the letter B. First I cut out a bee shape from yellow card. I cut up some back strips of paper and demonstrated gluing them on. We used PVA and we put the glue on with our fingers because I want them to learn that paint brushes and PVA do not go together. Then I hung them up to dry over night on the netting curtains.
The next day, after I trimmed the excess stripes and caught up an absent student, we tried to PVA glue on the pipe cleaners for the legs, antennae and proboscis. Only one child was successful at getting them all to stick. Not even I was successful. So the next day I worked one child at a time to hot glue the legs, antennae and proboscis on. This was more successful.
We have since glued on wings made of gold cellophane with the hot glue gun. I've also made a big flower on some cupboard doors and the children have made painted hand prints to make the flower a bit more 3-D and frilly. Eventually the bees will be buzzing around the flower. There are photos to come.
Below are the letters we have focused on so far. I get the children to brainstorm the words with me on the board and then I do them up for our big book to practise. This sits along side our poem for the word.
A wonderful junior room teacher I used to work with, Ruth Foulkes, always taught even the smallest students big words. So I am not shying away from big words. As part of the letter A this week we have watched YouTube videos of acrobats and astronauts and anteaters (did you know anteaters can climb trees? Neither did I until this week!).
For the letter A we had a big focus on "A for Apple". I went to New World and purchased five different varieties of apples (which all cost differing amounts) and we spent some time looking at the apples and talking about what they looked like.
Then we sketched the apple with our pencils. We talked about what colour crayons we would need and we coloured our apples in.
Full disclosure: this was my picture.
I'm fairly pleased with our first go at observational drawing.
Before Morning Tea we sat down and ate the apples. I cut them up so that we could all try each variety and see if there were differences and similarities. We did discover some were more sour or tart than others.
After Morning Tea we made apples out of the lower case 'a'. I got this idea off Pinterest from a Letter of the Week blog.
This one is mine. I will do all the activities. I always have.
This activity got them to focus on listening to and following instructions, looking at models, and the fine motor skills of putting on glue and gluing things down. Learning how to put glue around the outside and then a cross across the middle is still a work in progress, but we are making progress. Somethings these small skills are actually the biggest gifts we give our littlest learners - and that does not come through on a National Standard.
I'm going to love these going up on our wall. Watch out in the next couple of weeks for a blog about our classroom environment.
On the NZ Teachers Facebook page I regularly see posts asking about how to get into relieving and then other posts about what to have in your kete as a reliever. So I've decided to write a post about these things, passing on the tips I have garnered.
I was a reliever in 2007 and 2008 while completing my Graduate Diploma of Information Technology in Education, even having a significant stint at a high school mostly in the ICT department.
I relieved during Terms 1 and 2 in 2015 due to family circumstances and again throughout 2016 while studying my Masters of Education.
I have relieved in a New Entrant classroom one day and even been in a Year 13 Statistics class the next (that's a bit above my maths level unfortunately). Relieving has given me the opportunity to learn heaps about year levels I have previously avoided. I have seen some fabulous ideas to steal.... and now phones have cameras I don't have to carry a camera any more!
How to get on the relieving list
Personally I went and visited all of the possible schools I could relieve at, and that is my personal recommendation if you want to be known. I'm a bit lucky in that I live in the country, and it is 15 minutes to Cambridge, 20 minutes to Te Awamutu and 15 minutes to Hamilton from my house, meaning I had a wide number of schools to relieve at. Some towns, like Cambridge, have a school that colates the relieving list for the town and surrounding areas, but I still wanted to visit every school as I believe a face to the name and the personal touch makes a difference in the long run.
When I visited each school I took an A5 sheet of paper with the following relevant details to leave for the relieving co-ordinator:
full name
photo of me
contact phone number
registration number
photo of my practising certificate
years of experience
availability
year levels I will do (and I will do all of them)
addresses of my blogs
Some schools will ask you to email in a CV with referees, and I was willing to do so on request. Some schools will ask you to come back to meet with the relief co-ordinator for an orientation of sorts. I found that very beneficial.
Some schools ask if you are using a relief teacher app. Back in the day it was Class Cover, but I do not hear about that one anymore. My school using Staff Sync to access relievers, so sign up. I was on Class Cover during 2015 at the suggestion of a school.... but got nothing out of it until 2016. But now Staff Sync seems to be widely used. You will need to download the app for your phone... but you will need to sign up on an actual desktop device through the actual website and the app does not do all that.
What to expect on the day
I find that most teachers will have a programme they want you to follow. When I have my own class I usually try to keep certain things in the day going and set them up for the reliever, but I always leave a space for them to leave their mark on the day. So be prepared to follow what the teacher leaves - but don't be afraid to say, "I don't get how to do this" and not do something. As long as you leave a note it usually is not a problem.
Leave a note at the end of the day explaining what was achieved, students who were helpful, any concerns and the like. Teachers like the feedback.
As a newby at relieving you may feel more comfortable having a kete of resources to call upon. But don't go overboard. Here is what I recommend:
have several really good picture books that will cater for a variety of year levels.
choose maths activities that are not too complicated - basic facts are good, things that should be maintenance for most students. With the internet now you can make up worksheets of your own fairly easily. I often check with the teacher what the theme is and then do an easy activity I have.
have a series of story starters you can use or use the picture book as your story starter.
some poems that can be used as story and art prompts or which you can develop reading activities from.
keep up with simple art ideas from Pinterest. Don't be afraid to try something new.
do you know where your KiwiDEx is? A great resource as a reliever for fitness activities and mini-games.
a whistle can be advantageous.
As an experienced teacher and reliever, I don't carry a big kit of things anymore. I basically have a group of picture books that I base my day around. I can use these books to initiate English activities or writing or art... and occasionally maths. These are the books I have used a lot during the last year and there are links to blogs with reflections on using these books further down:
I got these books from the Warehouse... two books for $10... so you don't have to spend a lot. I've used these books with New Entrants up to Years 7 and 8. Another book I love using is Peter Millet's kiwi versions of some classic tales, The Anzac Biscuit Man and other classic kiwi tales.
This book is awesome for language features such as alliteration, onomatopoeia, colloquial language, visual language and more. A fabulous book and the author tweeted me a few days ago to let me know another is in the pipeworks. I even got applause from a class when I read them some stories from this book at one school
If you are musical, you could take along your guitar or have songs that you can teach students easily on the day without charts to sing. I was known at a few schools as "the teacher who does the Moose Song".
If you are PE minded I'm sure the children will love that side of you.
Many teachers will ring or text or email you to negotiate what you will do during the day. Some will ask you to come in and do your own thing. The main idea is that you are flexible to either do the whole day from your own ideas or to follow a set programme or do a mixture of both.
Behaviour management
You need to be quiet and firm. Students will challenge you, so be familiar with the classroom expectations and who will be your support if you have a difficult child during the day. I always say at the beginning of the day that some things will be different and some things will be the same. Rewards a teacher normally would do, I don't tend to, especially if I don't understand the system, because I don't want to stuff it up... but if I do understand the system I will milk it.
You are going to come across names that are really new to you. I always start the roll by saying that there will be new names to me, and I apologise in advance if I mispronounce it. I ask the student only whose name it is to say it to me, and I explain if they all call it out my ears won't work properly. If you are open about being challenged by a new name, the children appreciate the effort and time you take to get it right. This video below is a classic on how taking a roll can possibly go wrong.
You are not going to remember all their names. I use 'sunshine', 'mate' and 'sweetheart' a lot when I do not know their names. Little tricks like checking the name on an exercise book can help you. Just be honest and ask them to tell you their name again.
You will know certain students' names really well by the end of the day. You know the ones.
Some blog posts to inspire you
Here are some blog posts I have done about my relieving experiences in 2016 to inspire you:
Be flexible and be honest. Often I have turned up on the day to find the room and year level has changed. Try to go with it. I've been rung as late as well after 8 o'clock by some schools. Be honest if you are not going to make it by the first bell. I've been staying at my brother's to help him out and had to drop off my nephew at school and niece at daycare and then go home and feed kittens and get into school clothes before I could go to school on occasion.
If you are not comfortable with a certain age group or class, be honest with the relief co-ordinator. They will appreciate it in the long run.
Know when schools will be putting their relieving notes through to Novopay for the next pay day. I was caught out by a couple of schools not putting them through like other schools and that led to some difficult discussions when I was left short at the next pay day while expecting that day to be paid as it would at another school. Sometimes a day gets left off by accident, so just ring up the co-ordinator and they will sort it ASAP - but it will be the next pay round before you get it.
Be prepared to end up on duty even if the person you are covering doesn't have a duty. Often schools use relievers to cover other teachers... and it seems some weeks every school does it and you are on duty every day!
Take a hat. You never know when you'll be outside practising athletics.... like I was at one school before Labour Weekend and ended up with a fire engine red nose. And be prepared with protection against the wind and elements on windy and wet days.
Have your phone handy for those early morning calls for the last minute teacher absence due to illness. The earliest I have had was just before 6:00am. I've had the odd relief co-ordinator try texting me in the morning. I'm asleep unless I am booked. If you want me, ring me. Texts are ok the night before however.
Take your phone into the class to snap photos of the things in that class that speak to you for when you next have your own class. But do be aware of the security of your things. Check with the teacher or relief co-ordinator about access to keys to keep your things safe... or the BYOD the chldren have... or about locking the rooms at break times at some schools.
Don't be afraid to ask questions. The schools like that rather than you doing the wrong thing or misinforming students.
Tips from other teachers and things I've remembered later
do not mess with the teacher's desk and other bits and pieces. I had a reliever who tidied my desk and messed with my system while I was away on bereavement leave for a family member. She also put out all my 'rewards' for the students to use randomly. I was very, very mad. ~ Melulater
the same reliever also did not follow my plan for a unit and the standard of work from the students was extraordinarily poor because the learning had not happened first. This completely undermined me as the classroom teacher and I refused to have her in the room again. ~ Melulater
be aware of the student who has been identified as being the 'class helper' may actually play up for the reliever and the 'class clown' may work well with you, particularly if you have a different teaching styles to their regular teacher or outside unknown factors. Judge the kids on their own merits on the day. ~ Pia
you may want to choose to work through a company like Oasis Education. Look at your options and see what will suit you and any conditions you may encounter. ~ Melulater
there is a group on Facebook called NZ Relief Teacher (Primary) to share experiences, ask questions and gather support and ideas. ~ Martin
if you are taking photos in the classroom, be wary of overstepping the mark, use your professional judgement. ~ Kylie
if you see a great worksheet or resource, ask permission if you know it was teacher generated. ~ Kylie
ensure you leave the room tidy at the end of the day. A messy room may mean you are not welcome again. ~ Kylie
mark any work you do with the class. Kylie even suggest having a stamp made for saying "work set and seen by Ms X the reliever". ~ Kylie
do not hang any work or art on the wall without permission. ~ Caroline
be respectful of using resources. Ask which paper is able to be used if possible for example. But if asking is not possible, be conservative with what you do use. ~ Melulater
check what work should be done in which books. I had a reliever that saw my Kiwi Activity books that were the children's Achievement Books where their work samples and progress are celebrated and was going to get them to do some random activity in them!! Luckily the kids were like "no way man". He ended up doing this random activity in their Topic Books in the middle of a topic and it had nothing to do with my topic (also annoying the heck out of me). So sometimes teachers have a special book for relievers.... but just think really carefully before asking the children to do work in a book. I would have preferred he did it in their Literacy Books as that was a space that covered a wide area of learning across the curriculum. I requested he didn't come back to my class which was rather awkward when I met him in another setting. ~ Melulater
If you can think of any other tips, please leave them in the comments and I will amend the blog as things come to mind.
In term three last year I blogged about behaviour management and how I was coming to terms with learning how to speak the language of the virtues. The Year 4 class I had come into in term three had had a far bit of upheaval in the second term despite the best efforts of my predecessors and senior management to maintain stability, and as a result the class was not the cohesive unit you'd expect half way through the year and behaviour was erratic.
While I made progress using the virtues and building relationships, the behaviour management rewards side was not capturing the whole class. I had been giving out "Caught Being Good" cards (we called them Tuis - after the NZ Music Awards - to fit in with the class theme), but some kids had lost interest, and others were stealing them from their classmates. It became a massive effort to collect in the cards and issue the points and add them up.
Before the end of term three I was very despondent with how things were going and I was not enjoying the class, a personal disappointment to me as a professional teacher.
Something had to change.
I had heard of Class Dojo. I'd seen it talked about at Educamps and Eduignites and ULearn14. I had been involved in Twitter Chats and Facebook discussions on its merits.
I went to the Eduignite at Hautapu in term three and caught up with @ariaporo22, aka Alex, a high school teacher from Rotorua who is the Class Dojo Community Leader for New Zealand. We sat down and discussed the merits. Alex uses it for most of her classes. She uses it to reinforce the positives and rarely, if ever, used the negative side of Class Dojo.
I also talked to Maria, the teacher in the class next door, who was also using Class Dojo, to get her perspective on it. And then there were discussions with senior management on the way forward and how we could change the culture of the class and emphasise positive behaviour.
Three weeks before the end of term three I decided to revamp the behaviour management programme for term four and bring Class Dojo in to the mix to up the ante.
At ULearn15 Alex talked me through the set up and how it works over the cocktail event on the first night as we tried some MLE furniture out of size. We set up an account and a "practise class" on my phone and practised giving and taking points and making new rewards to give out. We also practised changing the monsters for each student.
The practise run - this was part of Alex's mini tutorial at ULearn15 with me.
Later on, I set up the real account for my class and it was very easy to do so after Alex's mini tutorial.
On the first day of school I sat the kids down and I really wanted to show them the new programme on the ActivBoard.... but in the holidays the school server died and my laptop and the new server were not talking. So using my phone I showed them the Class Dojo video for the class and talked them through it.
I think the monsters hooked the kids. They liked the bright colours, the multiple eyes and the horns.
I also focused on the virtues that we needed to use in the class to develop the virtue of Unity - friendliness, patience, responsibility, respect, self-discipline, consideration. Many of these virtues the children could tell you what they looked like but many students were struggling to demonstrate them in how they behaved.
An example of some of the positive behaviours you can edit.
As Alex suggested I tried to keep the positive side of the tool the focus. I loaded up the rewards with references to the virtues we really needed to use in the class. And then I went made on the clicking.
I'm not going to tell you that it solved all my classroom management issues with this class, but the term was a lot better than the previous term. Those kids who really wanted to learn and were shining examples of how to behave in the class were recognised for their efforts in a very visual way. They soon led the points tally. My students who were not shining lights trialled behind.
That's when I brought in an incentive. A sticker chart.
I needed something that was visible when the Class Dojo was not shining on the ActivBoard. So every time a child got another 50 points, they got a sticker. After every 150 points they got 15 minutes golden time. They could use the golden time to use the i-Pads, the computer, play with the class Lego or other equipment, read, or even go outside and kick a ball around.
When the class got to 1000 points (we did this most weeks), we negotiated a game to play outside.
This got my students who were not shining lights moving. They wanted the golden time. They wanted the outside game. You have to love bribery.
The kids often wanted to change their monsters. I had to limit this to once a week per child and after school, because it could be time consuming.
Class Dojo has provision for you to link in the families so they can see from home how it is going. It can also be used to communicate with parents But as this was my first time and the school had no precedence in doing this, I decided against it. If I had been in a school with established relationships with parents I may have considered this. However, some parents had heard about it from their children and came in after school to check progress as their child changed their monster. When we had Student Led Conferences, some parents commented that their child had made their own accounts at home and ran their own Class Dojo system!
I also kept giving out the Virtues Cards. Class Dojo sometimes helped me with this because I could go back and check points I had given for a certain behaviour. I probably gave out more Virtue Cards than before.
These are some of the highlights of using Class Dojo and some things I learned from a term using it:
You can change the value of the points awarded. I kept it at 1 point for everything, but if there is a behaviour you really want to push, you can change the value to a higher point reward and that may be a way to get that behaviour occurring more.
I could use it at my computer or from my phone. That meant I could be taking a reading group on the mat, and when I see Bob at the back of the room working hard, rather than ticking his name on the board or going to my laptop to click a Dojo point, I could do it from my phone on the floor. It also meant that at assemblies or whole school singing or Kapa Haka, I could give out points for participation or respect or whatever from my phone.
When relievers came in (who were usually inhouse relievers at this school), I could open Class Dojo on their laptops and they could dish out the points to the kids too, ensuring the class behaviour management was consistent. It also meant I could see that some kids were behaving at least every time my laptop or phone dinged!
I would use the Random button at the end of the day to let kids go and give them a point for a behaviour. This was a great time for me to be able to end the day by saying something positive to each child.
During the time we were doing Athletic sports rotations and I didn't have my class, I used the Random button to make the students accountable for their behaviour with other teachers. If a student's name came up, I would asked their peers if they deserved a point and what behaviour they should get it for. Some students would be honest and declare they did not deserved a point as a result. If they did this, I would thank that student for their honesty.
I also used Random to give out special prizes. When we had the Tuis I would do a Tui Draw and the students pulled out of the kete would be able to choose from the choosing box (pencils, highlighters, erasers, mini notebooks, rulers, colouring pencils...). I was able to still do this by clicking on Random.
You can use Class Dojo to remind you who is not there! When we did the roll each morning, we would also do the roll on Class Dojo and the students not there would fade grey so you didn't reward them points. If a child arrives late, you go into attendance and click their name and they come back bold again. Each child also gets a point for being at school on time. You can also label students late if they come in as you are doing the roll.
You can award a group of selected kids or individuals or the whole class at once.
You can create groups. I made groups for my reading and maths groups. If I felt a session went well it meant I could click on the Short Tailed Bats maths group or the Takahe reading group and the children in that group received points. Any absent child would not receive points.
There are a whole pile of resources, like certificates and more, that you can access to enhance the experience. I have yet to use these.
You can check out the statistics for behaviour as a whole class, group or individual.
If you have instigated the facility for parent participation, you can post notices, photos and videos for parents to view. It's called Class Story.
There is now a goal feature - that was developed after I made my sticker chart. Ironic.
Class Dojo sends you messages to tell you about developments through the app.
These are some of the things I would like to see Class Dojo do to enhance the tool for teachers and students, if possible:
Make it so the students can create their own monster - colour, number of eyes, visible teeth, horns.... I suspect it is already available - but the kids have to have their own log ins to do it.
When you click on a child or a selection of children, make it so you can click more than one behaviour or the same behaviour multiple times to reward a child.
Allow the teacher to choose different sounds to go with a behaviour so the children can identify the reward by the sound as well.
Have a greater variety of icons for the behaviours. I had icons doubling up, which was tricky visibly.
On the whole, I found this tool helped my class become a calmer group during term four that had better behaviour to enable more learning. I was able to reward those students who often slip under the radar because you can become too focused on the children with undesirable behaviour. It forced me (gladly) to look for the positives in a group that I was losing hope in. Class Dojo enabled us as a class to focus on what was good in our class.
It is easy to set up (plenty of YouTube tutorials if you need them), the app can be used across a variety of platforms and the administrators are regularly coming up with new features. The use of it in the classroom can be as easy or laborious as you want.
Behaviour management - it makes or breaks a class environment and affects relationships and learning progress if you do not get it right. Every class is different. Every class has a different key that the teacher needs to find with the students to create the effective classroom environment to foster relationships and learning.
Over the years I have used a variety of systems.
One school I was at I used the tried and true points system. I had my class divided up into 4-6 groups (depending on numbers) to earn the points. It had the advantage of ready made teams for fitness and sports as well. I dished out points for having all their chairs down before the morning bell, being in class before I was after any bell, bringing completed homework back, winning students in maths games, being ready to listen, participation.... you name it, it had the potential to earn points.
Other schools had students in houses, so I used that to give out points.
Then there is the classic smiley face/sad face name on the board for positives and negatives.
I had CBGs (Caught Being Good cards) that I dished out to one class in order to keep a positive vibe going and so I didn't develop permanent frown lines.
Some classes I did not need to bribe students/give out points. The evil eye and the phrase "I'm very disappointed..." was enough to do the damage. In another class I had, students would hold my hand while I was on duty to pay back their time to me.
Over the years I have been to a number of behaviour management and class climate courses. I believe this should be a must do for every teacher ever 2-3 years because we can get stale and 'forget' strategies if we haven't used them in a while. I've particularly enjoyed the courses I went to by Bill Rogers (assertive discipline) and Lynley Russek (more classroom management techniques) and have used their techniques over a number of years.
But there is always new tricks an established teacher can learn, and I am currently in the middle of a steep learning curve.
I took over an established class a few weeks ago. There has been a lot of firsts for me in the last few weeks, and at times it has been overwhelming. Firstly, I am teaching for the first time at a big town school - a huge adjustment after mostly teaching at small country schools with less than 120 students. I'm working in a syndicate, which I am still working out how this works. The planning is different. The way staff meetings are run is different. The daily timetable is different. The methods of communication is different. The behaviour management system is different.
This school follows the virtues model. It is actually something that I am excited to learn about. I was first introduced to the concept at an introductory workshop many years ago that my principal sent me to in order to find out about it and report back. Zoom forward many years and I wanted to go through many of these virtues with my with a Year 5-8 class using a fabulous book by Peter Millet, The Anzac Biscuit Man. So the actual virtues themselves are not unfamiliar, but the implementation of using them in a behaviour management system is. It is like learning a whole new language.
And that is the part I have struggled with the most, the discourse of how to speak the language of the virtues. For the senior leadership team (principal down to team leaders) this language flows freely from their tongue as they support me as a beginner to this way of speaking. They use the virtues as the basis for restorative conversations between students and between individual teachers and students.
I have struggled with establishing the classroom environment with this group of students. The majority of students are keen and ready to learn, but there is a group who struggle to manage their own behaviour and have not been responding to the positive measures I have been implementing. And because I am still learning the discourse of the virtues, because these children are testing my boundaries for reactions, I am not connecting well with these students; I have not found the key.
So here I will describe what I am attempting to implement:
I have inherited a class metaphor. This was new to me. Each class at the school has their own metaphor which links in with targeted virtues, and there are some really creative ones to inspire the students to develop class unity. My class metaphor was established two teachers ago, and I thought it was best to stick with it and not reinvent the wheel.
The metaphor is: We are shining our virtues to become award winning stars.
It uses Hollywood/movies as the theme. My class leaders are called Assistant Directors (I guess that makes me the director) and they sit on camp chairs (reminiscent of director's chairs). Oscar (as in the highest award for films) is like the class mascot with the following virtues attributed like an acrostic poem:
I've divided the class into four groups, the Grammys, the Oscars, the Baftas and the Golden Globes. I have Tuis (named after the NZ Music Awards, and instead of CBGs) to hand out as positive reinforcements. At the end of the day the students hand these back in with their names written on the back. Each Tui earns the student 10 points for their group and is another chance to have their name drawn out on Thursday afternoon for a treat (highlighters, mini pads, coloured pencils, pens and pencils...). Groups can also earn points for actions like being the first ready with books and equipment, showing they are listening, great group work, having their chairs down.
All of the group points added together will go towards the class goal, currently set at 10,000 points, and then a higher total like 20,000 once we reach that to move forward. The whole class gets a reward. This time round it is likely to be a sport of their choice. In the past I have also used a movie afternoon, trip to the pools, Easter eggs, board games afternoon....
That was the easy part to implement. The majority of the students are receptive and are working hard to earn Tuis and points for their groups.
The school also has Virtue Cards. Teachers (and class leaders I think) give these cards out as reinforcements and rewards for the virtues they see demonstrated by students or are promoting. The student then takes it home for the parents to acknowledge and sign before bringing it back to school and posting in the Virtues Box at the office in the hopes of being drawn out at Assembly for a special prize.
It's taken me a couple of weeks to get my head around the Virtue Cards, but I have now made it part of the daily expectations to reinforce the behaviours I want to see in my class.
But what happens with the negative behaviours? This is where I have really struggled because the feel of the school is for those positive restorative conversations, but how to you convey the gravity of the impacts of continued negative behaviours to the students who frequently fail to demonstrate their self-discipline and respect without stepping over the mark, in a way that is effective? I was not happy, my students were not happy.
I sat down with my team leader and the AP early last week and nutted out what this part would look like. What was helpful was knowing that the team leader also had to put in the hard yards at the beginning of the year when she was new to the school. I've since had the opportunity to observe in her classroom and her hard work at the beginning of the year has certainly paid off.
I took the expectations back to the class and explained it. Essentially it boils down to me explaining the virtues I expect to see as we learn during the day. If I see a student who is disruptive or off task or loud I give them a verbal reminder of the virtue they need to exhibit, e.g. Bob, please demonstrate the virtue of peacefulness (translated: Bob, stop being so loud). I check back to see that Bob is now quietly working. If Bob is not quietly working, I write Bob's name on the board along with the virtue they need to practice. If Bob continues to not use his virtues, he owes the teacher, me, time in his next break. During this time I get Bob to write out the Kawa of the school as many times as his name ended up beside a virtue on the board. For repeated behaviour through the day, Bob can be referred to the Virtues Help Room where he has the chance to discuss his behaviour and how he can make better choices and a restorative conversation and/or to the team leader or AP for a restorative conversation, and this could result in home being contacted.
So I began doing this. But I had students who continually demonstrated that they were unable to manage their own behaviour. It was becoming somewhat overwhelming and on Monday I was so disturbed by my inability to do any teaching and the frustration of the other students I removed a repeat offender from the class to the team leader's room - where another AP was releasing her for the block! Mortifying!
But he was just as supportive as the other AP, modelling restorative conversations, some advice on how to utilise the Virtues Cards and discussing how the SLT (principal included) can support me as the teacher and these students to achieve a sustainable outcome. This is still a work in progress, but the next day was a better day. The students know the consequences and I am no longer getting howls of despair when I follow through.
In writing this post, I came across this meme below, which pretty much sums up the learning curve I am going through in learning the language of the virtues.
Learning the language of the virtues and establishing the climate of my class with me as the teacher is still a work in progress. After watching the team leader with her class I was in awe. But I have had classes like that too, and I know I'm going to have to work hard to get this current class to the standard I've had previously in behaviour and self-management.
So bring it on and let the learning continue.... and may I always remember these wise words below:
Today this photo came up through my timeline thanks to the Facebook group BATs (Bad Ass Teachers from the USA).
It invoked in me some distaste. It made me think about how we as teachers display children's behaviour and learning.
At the beginning of 2013 I began a new position. The previous teacher had left a form of data wall display for writing up in in the classroom. Apart from the fact that he had used a prime display wall, I just could not abide with continuing with this as it was a multi-year-level class and many students were struggling in their learning.
I reposted this photo in NZ Teacher (Primary) of Facebook and a lot of discussion followed. Some people were very opposed to these sorts of displays; a small group of others praised their variations of such a display.
I was heartened by the responses and passion teachers had about this topic. This was the comment I wrote to support my position regarding the above photo today: I personally believe that these sorts of things should be in student's work books or their learning journals because any achievement should be communicated privately between teachers, students and caregivers. If a student chooses to tell their classmate then that is their decision. I do believe that displaying exemplars and WALTs and the like in the room is valuable, but I would much rather display the student's work.
So then I posted this to Twitter as a reflection on the discussion I had initiated on Facebook:
