One of the most amazing tools I have seen in use in classrooms is ClassDojo. For those of you who haven’t discovered it, I would say it potentially could revolutionise your classroom management system. ClassDojo allows you to set up rewards for your class. For example, you might wish to reward children for being kind or being gentle. The rewards come in the form of points. The image below shows a typical class set up (screenshot from ClassDojo YouTube Channel), which shows what the children will see.
As you can see Jay (on the second row) is doing very well indeed! Sometimes your whole class may have performed well and you can give a point to everyone in your class. At the end of the week, you might give a reward to the child with the highest points, for example. The downside of classroom management is when a child isn’t doing something he/she should be doing. For example, if a child doesn’t look after property, they might lose a point.
All the way through this, data is stored and a beautiful graph can be made to show the different behaviours that each child has performed. Even better the child and his/her family can log on to their own account at home and see how they’re getting on in school. Children will also love the fact that they can choose their own avatar and change it when they want to.
It’s all so simple but incredibly motivating. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a teacher using it with her class and she was kind enough to show me the progress being made because of it. It was also heartening to see the number of children who accessed their ClassDojo account at home to show their parents how they were doing.
There are other companies offering this type of service for hundreds of euro each but none that I’ve seen have come anywhere close to ClassDojo. I don’t know how they’re doing it but ClassDojo is completely free. So if you’re looking for a winning classroom management system that visual and effective, look no further than ClassDojo. ClassDojo can be found at http://www.classdojo.com
Last Update: August 18, 2017
I’ll be using Class Dojo again this year. We showed it to the participants on a summer course this week and most were very impressed too. Like you said, I’m not sure how they’re keeping it free but I’m grateful that they are!
If you ever fancy sending me a guest post for Anseo about ClassDojo, I’d love to get a real teacher’s experience.
Hi Simon – Kalen from ClassDojo here. Thank you so much for this great post – we are honored by your support!
If anyone who comes across this post has any questions for us or need help getting set up with your free account, please don’t hesitate to reach out at [email protected] 🙂
Cheers!
Thanks for the comment Kalen. You guys are amazing! Keep up the great work.
ClassDojo is indeed an effective classroom management system because students exert effort in giving extra effort in maintaining their good performance in school. I will explore more on this and recommend it to my colleagues.
Just “Avatarized” my new 5th & 6th class this morning ahead of new school year. Looks like a lot of fun and should be useful. Novelty may wear off after a while but hopefully the prospect of a “homework pass” or “golden time” will keep it interesting!
Good post Simon, hadn’t heard of this before, thanks!
Best of luck with the year ahead!
Hi my daughter’s teacher started using this today and gave students a secret code. This evening we logged on to find my daughter was at -1 for disrespect and therefore 0% progress. She’s 7 years old and cried for half an hour. She’s devastated. She said that she was corrected by the teacher today and tried really hard afterwards. The focus was put on the bad behaviour rather than the good. In the wrong hands this tool can be devastating for a child. I was very upset.
PS I’m a teacher too!
I guess, like everything, tools depend on the person using them for their success.
My grandson’s school is using this tool to prove that my son should not have custody of his children. They say the scores indicate which parent is doing a better job. This is a subjective tool and I am not sure a free app is what teachers need. They need specific instruction in the right and wrong uses for this tool. I would never recommend this tool for any teacher without extensive training on the right way to use it!!!!
i love classjojo