ClassDojo are releasing a number of updates over the summer. For teachers in Ireland, the one that’s going to excite you the most is ClassDojo groups. Most primary school classrooms have a number of reward systems. There’s the individual rewards that ClassDojo has been taking care of nicely over the last few years. There are also whole class rewards where everyone in the class gains points and ClassDojo also takes care of this.
Here is my virtual class:
Most classrooms also have group rewards based on where the children are sitting. For example, most classrooms I’ve seen have a coloured piece of card hanging from the ceiling with a colour and groups are named after this colour, i.e. the red group, blue group, etc. Some groups have names that the teacher makes up and others have names that the children make up. For example, the “Super Duper Dinosaur Alien Collective” might indicate one that children make up or, perhaps, a teacher who might need less coffee!
Up until now, it was possible to award groups on ClassDojo but one had to select multiple students each time. You can now set up groups and award them points. The individual students in each group are rewarded the points too. Here’s my virtual class groups.
It’s very easy to set up groups but I’ve written a short step-by-step guide to doing it. To set up a group, all you need to do is find the button +Add Group on the top right of the “Groups” section.
A box will pop up with all your students. The first thing to do is give your group a name. I’m going to make some English groups where the children will be sitting in different places to normal so my first group will be called English 1.
Next, I select the children that I want in the group. I simply click on a name to select him/her and click again to deselect.
Once all my group is picked, I scroll to the bottom of the box and click on the button titled Create Group.
To edit or delete a group that I’ve created, simply click on the group and find the “Settings” icon on the top left and click on either Edit Group or Delete Group.
If you delete a group, you will be get a warning as groups can’t be undeleted. However, it’s such an easy thing to fix, it’s no big deal if you do!
When you give a group points, the individual children in the group get the points so it maps on to the full class, which is not surprising but worth mentioning. If you’re not into individual rewards, you can keep groups displayed and not show the full class but I don’t know why one would do that!
Here’s a Silent Slam from Anseo.net showing you a few tricks:
Groups are a great addition to ClassDojo and well needed. It’s going to make classroom management easier than ever.
