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 ULearn15. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ULearn15. Show all posts

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

Class Dojo - a behaviour management tool for the digital child and teacher.

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.

Saturday, 10 October 2015

#edblognz ULearn15 Blogger Selfie Challenge #cenz

If at Ulearn - Find a blogger you admire, shake their hand and take a selfie with them to post on your blog. Then find a new blogger and do the same! If you’re feeling really generous buy them a coffee! Write about it too!

This last week I went to ULearn15 at Sky City Convention Centre in Auckland.  This is my fifth ULearn in a row, and at each one I have found inspiration and met amazing people and reconnected with old friends from many areas of my life. 

This year the networking was awesome.  I got to meet bloggers and tweeters and inspirational educators who I've been connecting with for up to four years (the amount of time I have been on Twitter as I joined at the end of ULearn11).  This is how I have built up and widened my Personal Learning Network and become a connected educator through Twitter and going to ULearn, Educamps and EduIgnites.

On Wednesday night I attended the Twitter Dinner.  There were about 55 people there, not all of whom were attending ULearn.  @digitallearnin organised the evening and had us interacting with a game of Twitter Bingo, as you can see below.



First up for the selfie challenge was @st3ph007 or StephT who has the blog Four Seasons in One Kiwi.  I've always really enjoyed reading her blog posts.  They challenge me in some of my thinking.  Often I agree, at times I do not.  @st3ph007 has also supported @kerriattamatea in her establishment of the #BFC630NZ quick education chat each week day morning of term which I have participated in on occasion.  @st3ph007 also is a regular participant in #edchatnz and has been known to put her wisdom out on Facebook pages I frequent too.  It was fabulous to finally meet Steph and hear her passion for education in the flesh.


One of the Breakouts I went to at ULearn15 was presented by @Cherie59789095 and it was about networks and clusters, a hot topic currently.  It took me a few minutes to click on to the fact that I had been interacting with the presenter on Twitter for quite a while as I wasn't able to click into the online resource for about 10 or so minutes.  I had the opportunity to have a long chat with Cherie later in the evening after the Gala Dinner and I was thrilled to make the face to face connection with such an amazing leader.


During Brunch on the last day @vanschaijik who is also known as Sonya, sat beside me, and soon after we were joined by @mrehu.  Sonya is one of the admins for #edblognz and is a big driver behind TeachMeetNZ, a virtual PLD meeting space.  Sonya has also been a connected educator in many other ways too, which you can check out at http://sonyavanschaijik.com/.

I have been following @mrehu for nearly two years, I think, and at the Gala Dinner I met one of his teachers, @KNgarangione, who had come to ULearn15 with a group of the staff and she raved about working with him.  So it was a bonus to sit down with Maurice for a few minutes and shoot the breeze about our highlights at the conference.


And lastly, after a false start the afternoon before where our timing was out, @mjbuckland and I finally caught up and had that f2f meet up and chat about the conference this year and in the past, Twitter and the "take homes" we have. 


Alas, I failed to meet any new bloggers at ULearn15, but if you are a fairly new blogger and you are reading this and would like to help me out with a virtual meeting, or a f2f if you are in Hamilton, Cambridge or Te Awamutu, drop me a line at @melulater or through the comments.

It was great to meet all these people in the flesh for the first time this year, but also great to meet up with many other awesome educators that I have been meeting over the last few years, especially since 2012's ULearn.

Thursday, 8 October 2015

ULearn 15 - Keynote Speaker: Grant Lichtman - On the Road: Keys to Successful School Innovation in Times of Change.

Surprisingly (NOT!), I arrived to ULearn15 just after the first keynote speaker, Grant Lichtman, began his address to the conference.  As I caught up on the previous couple of hours of messages and social media, I was listening and picking things up.  But I decided to retweet others and respond to their tweets rather than live tweet myself.

Consequently, when I drew the tweets from this keynote from my Twitter timeline for the Storify down below, it is out of order of what actually was said when as the tweets came out where I retweeted from.

Grant Lichtman's address to ULearn15 was about being successful with innovation and change in your school.  A timely address, as, like all education systems around the world, New Zealand is going through yet another change.

Going to Grant's website, www.grantlichtman.com, this is the introductory paragraph about Grant:
Nationally recognized thought leader in the drive to transform K-12 education, Grant speaks, writes, and works with fellow educators to build capacity and comfort with innovation in response to a rapidly changing world.

Grant also blogs at http://www.grantlichtman.com/blog/.

As Grant spoke, I was struck by a number of points he made and how similar his metaphor was to Dr Jean Mitaera's metaphor during her address to the NZEI Annual Conference last week.

Grant likened being a teacher to being a farmer.  The teacher has to clear the land of obstacles and layout the fence lines (boundaries) so they can nurture the crop/animals/learner.


It struck a chord with me as Dr Jean last week said teachers were like gardeners: preparing the soil (finding out about their learners and making the classroom a great learning space), choosing the seeds (what needs to be taught), watering, weeding, pruning, nurturing.  You can read more about this at Talanoa and Dr Jean Mitaera at the NZEI Annual Conference.



This is my tweet from the NZEI conference last week.  Dr Jean also spoke about choosing the right tools to do the job and making sure they were sharp and ready.


Grant also talked about teachers being active in the learning with the students, not being a guide on the side with a degree of detachment.

Another stand out comment from Grant that spoke to me, was how impressed he was that New Zealand educators were not reliant on text books generally like they are in the US or the UK.  I found, when I was in the UK in 2001/2002, that it was almost like, "Today is Wednesday 7 October, so the Year 4s should be doing page 27 of Blah Blah text book" regardless of whether or not they were a struggling learning, on track or way ahead for their year group.  New Zealand is very good at catering for the diverse abilities within a class, however, we have also found, with National Standards being implemented, that sometimes the target group gets all the attention and the capable and above sometimes don't get that extension we would like to give.

Surveying my students for that one word that describes a part of the day - I quite like this idea and I think it would be worth a go - so that is a "take away to try" for me.


And these two questions tweeted out by @chaelebel and @MissDtheTeacher are well worthy of further consideration.

The difference between just going to school and really great learning?  I guess it is being excited about school and learning in my opinion.  Just going is a chore, a necessity.  But being excited about school and learning is another thing altogether.  But I think this doesn't just apply to our students.  I think it has to apply to us as teachers too, because if we are not excited about learning and school and our students, how can we expect to inspire our students and give them what they need from us?

I think for wanting more time, some of it has to do with being planned and organised.  There is nothing worse than kids waiting for you to think about what you want to do with them when they get to the mat.  Another aspect is having great classroom systems so that the students know what is expected of them and when so they can be self managing.  And another aspect is timetabling - running workshops, having flexibility about when you take your maths or reading or writing groups, when you demonstrate a skill, a MYLearning aspect to it.

The tweets below are basically telling us that we have to be used to change.

This is my 20th year of teaching, and in my experience, teachers are constantly in a state of change and discomfort.  This is our normal.  When I was still at high school, Tomorrow's Schools was the huge shake up.  During my teacher training and early teaching life in the 90s there was constant change with a new curriculum document in draft form each year along with another curriculum document being gazetted and implemented.  Plus there were huge political issues with bulk funding and individual employment contracts for principals.  Then there were changes in areas such as EOTC and ICTPD.  Moving into the 2000s we had the Literacy and Numeracy projects and inquiry hijacking the ICTPD.  In the mid 2000s we had a whole new curriculum document to comment on, and then just as we were working to implement that document, we were knocked sideways by the introduction of National Standards, followed by IES/Joint Initiative.  Now this is merely looking at it from a primary teachers point of view, but the ECE, secondary and tertiary sectors have also had massive upheaval and change, and adult education/night school was massacred.  So to me, this statement is somewhat of an insult.  Change is our norm.

Below is something I agree with - but I am not sure we are talking the same thing.  This statement may be focused on the small picture within each school.  I'm thinking big picture, nationwide, all of education!


To me, the Operating System is our Education System.  Now Hekia Parata has clearly stated on a number of occasions over the last year that she wants to totally revamp the Education Act.  She intends to do this over the next year.  The last time we had a major change to our education system was Tomorrow's Schools. 

What I think we need is a full stocktake of the system.  Identify what is working and what isn't; what should stay and what should go; what is fine and what needs to change; what would work better with a bit of tinkering or a bit more tinkering.  And this should happen before changing the funding, before changing the Education Act, before bringing in another level of bureaucracy like IES/Joint Initiative - but it won't.

It was a very good keynote to start the conference with and certainly got people talking, tweeting and thinking.  So that was my thoughts.  Read through the Storify below and let me know your thinks.

What was really nice was that Grant Lichtman attended the Twitter Dinner that evening and it was great to interact with him in a social environment.

Sadly, Storify has deleted itself from the Social Media scene, so all my Storify stories have gone.  😭😭😭😭😭



Sadly, my first Breakout was a failure with the presenter being a no show due to being double booked.  I was extremely disappointed that the ULearn organisers were not more proactive at the time in ensuring participants knew and had an alternative to attend.  However, it appears a major communication failure happened to cause the situation, and Core Education has been brilliant in coming to a solution to appease my disappointment.  So thanks team at Core Education.

My second Breakout was cool as... but that is for another post!