Swinging for Success: clip chart

Showing posts with label clip chart. Show all posts

I'm slowly getting back into a school routine. I love linking up with Holly to share what's working in my classroom and at home.

This week I wanted to share how I use my clip chart with Class Dojo. We use a clip chart school-wide and I had never used one before beginning at this school in January. Over the summer I had time to think about how I could use this management tool with Class Dojo, which I love. Here's what I came up with:

In this picture you can see my clip chart. I have somewhat of a sports theme going in my classroom and I decided to make my clip chart line up with that. All the kids start at "Game Time" and can move up or down for there (pretty standard clip chart).

At the end of the day, if they end up on MVP, they get to add a sticker to their clip. I just use these foam stickers that I found in one of my cabinets.

Also at the end of the day, I have my clip chart monitor tell me who clipped up to what level. Here is where Class Dojo comes in!

I've blogged about Class Dojo a few times which you can read HERE and you can click on the Dojo picture above to go directly to the site.

Getting back to what I do. When the clip chart monitor reads me the numbers from the clips that have moved up or down, I simply go into Class Dojo and award points. I've added the behaviors of clip up on the positive side and clip down on the negative sive. If they get up to MVP, they earn 3 Dojo points, All-Star is worth 2 Dojo points, and Score is worth 1 Dojo point. If they end the day under Game Time, they lose Dojo points. Ending on Foul means they lose 1 point, Strikeout loses 2 points, and benched loses 3 points. My students earn rewards and reward tags for every 10 Dojo points.

So far this system is working great for me and my kiddos. I'm supporting the school wide behavior plan while also making it my own. Do you use Class Dojo and/or a clip chart? How's your behavior management plan working for you?

Brandi

I love that this linky party is back to being weekly. It gets me up and motivated to create things to use at work and at home. This week I made 2 things to use in my classroom.

First up is my Calendar Math. I am participating in a book study of Laney Sammons' Guided Math and I am loving every little bit of it. One of the areas that I know I need to improve is creating a numeracy rich environment and giving my kids an opportunity to be a part of a mathematical community of learners. I created these posters that I plan to laminate and put up on my math board. I will only put up 5-6 at the most and students will answer them on their white boards. We'll go over the answers as a class and spend a lot of the time talking about how they arrived at their answers, what strategies they used, and how this relates to things we've been learning. I'm really excited to see this in action!

Here are some pictures if you want to check it out:

I also made a sports theme clip chart. We use this as part of our school wide behavior management and I wanted one to go with my theme so here it is.

I'm excited to see what everyone else has created. I get so inspired from everyone's posts and keep adding to my to do lists. Please stop by tomorrow and Thursday for my book studies on Guided Reading and Guided Math. Have a great week!

Brandi

I love that summer is a time to rejuvenate and reflect. One of the areas that I'm constantly rethinking is classroom management, so when I saw this linky from Laura at Where the Magic Happens, I knew I needed to sit down and reflect on my plans for this year.

Classroom Management

Having just finished my 10th year of teaching, I realize that classroom management is multi-layered. It's taken some time to get here, but I feel comfortable in the strategies and approaches I use.

Individual:

My school uses clip charts school wide. I remade mine to match my sports theme.

I like the clip chart because it allows me to focus on positive as well as negative behavior. As students make good choices, they can clip up. At the end of the day, I give out (or take away) Class Dojo points based on how they clipped during the day. My students really respond well to Class Dojo. I've blogged about it previously HERE. Students work hard to earn points for different rewards. I use scratchers, reward coupons, and reward tags as rewards. I think my students love reward tags the most. Here are some pictures of them:

Team

In addition to the individual student behavior, I also have my students sitting in groups and use teams to help out with the behavior expectations. I do not have any specific rewards for the teams, but do allow them to be first when I see them doing well. I plan to change this up, but I'll talk about that later.

Whole Class

The final layer of my management plan is whole class. I use brownie points when my class receives a compliment from someone else. When the brownie tray is filled up we have a little treat as a class.

Next year I want to add jewels to my clip chart. I saw this on Pinterest:

and linked it back to First Grade Glitter and Giggles. I love the idea of having a Hall of Fame to retire clips to and that fits perfectly with my sports theme. The idea behind this is that any time a student reaches the top of the chart, they earn a jewel. After they earn 5 jewels, they get to retire their clip to the Hall of Fame and start over. I will probably give them a decorative clip (either spray painted or with Washi tape) for their new clip as an added incentive. I saw that some people give jewels every time they clip up, but since I'll be giving out Dojo points for each clip up, I decided against that.

Another thing that I would like to add is a better way to reward my teams. I was ~~stalking~~ reading Jamie's post (Diary of a Not So Wimpy Teacher) on classroom management and knew instantly I needed to have these Team of the Week placemats: