Behaviour Management Systems

Online Behaviour Management Systems are becoming popular tools for teachers to record and monitor pupils’ behaviour in class. Given that almost every classroom now has an Interactive Whiteboard (or at least a projector), Behaviour Management Systems can be a highly effective, visual way to display how a class is performing. In this article, I am going to showcase three Behaviour Management Systems, ClassDojo, Class Charts and Gotcha Ninjas.

ClassDojo

ClassDojo was the first free Behaviour Management System to grace the Internet and has been around for a couple of years. It has built up a large following amongst teachers around the world, including Ireland, and its success has been down to a number of things. Firstly, it’s really easy to use. All one needs to do is log in (as a teacher) and add your class. Once this is done, you can start awarding (and sanctioning) behaviour. All children have an avatar and they can also log on to see their own progress. Even parents can log on to see how their child is doing. The other reasons that ClassDojo is doing so well is that it is constantly listening to its users. There have been vast improvements since it came on the scene and now it allows you to take attendance. It also provides a stopwatch and timer and even has a random student picker, which picks a random child from the class to answer a question. ClassDojo are fantastic at answering questions on Twitter and the best thing of all is that it is free.

Class Charts

Class Charts is a relatively recent addition to the Behaviour Management System market and it appears to be heavily influenced by ClassDojo in its look. However, Class Charts bases itself on being a classroom seating system and everything else comes from this. For example, you can add all sorts of information about a pupil, apart from their basic details. Avatars can even be replaced by real images of the child. Class Charts also is good at delivering charts based on data taken in by the system, for example, behaviour records. A neat feature of Class Charts is the ability to give points for answering questions correctly. This also can be made into nice charts. The system also allows for attendance monitoring and again these can be charted on report pages. Overall, Class Charts provides similar features to ClassDojo and it is also free. It has a few extra features than ClassDojo and it would be interesting to see how they fare against each other over the coming years.

Gotcha Ninjas

Gotcha Ninjas is an Irish company and was founded by a teacher. It aims to create a digitized, gamified version of a traditional star chart, which is found on many walls in the Irish classroom that students and teachers can interact with throughout the day. Similarly to the above Behaviour Management Systems, small ninja figures on the screen reward children’s avatars with games, stars and belts for positive behaviour. You can also organise seating plans and take attendance. You can also divide your class into groups so you can reward groups as well as individuals. However, some interesting features that Gotcha Ninjas have are the ability to digitalise Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and Individual Behaviour Plans (IBPs), which is quite useful and targeted at the Irish market. Where Gotcha Ninjas differs greatly from the above two services, in that it is a positive reinforcement approach only; there are no points taken away for bad behaviour and no negative language is employed in it. This may suit teachers who do not like the negative aspects of Class Charts or ClassDojo. I haven’t received any details about how much Gotcha Ninjas will cost and there are still more features being added to it before its official launch soon.