Classroom Management What works for me

I have wanted to share something with you all for a little while now. I know we all have to have a plan for how to manage our classrooms, how to make sure we setting the bar for good behavior and what do we do when behavior is not positive.  I have changed and tinkered with my plan many times.  How am I suppose to manage behavior, but also make it FUN and EASY for me and my students.  I want to celebrate my students successes, not always come down on their mistakes or misbehaviors.  About a year and a half ago I stumbled upon  www.ClassDojo.com  It is a free site that I use to give or take points from my students for the behaviors they show at school.  The first thing that drew me in was the cute, fun avatars that you can give to each child, or if you choose you can upload their own picture.  Let's face it the fact that it is FREE is also a very important thing for teachers.  Can anyone say BUDGET ; )  

Basically you load your students names into the list and each child is given a little monster type of avatar.  Unless you choose to use their own pic you have taken.  Every teacher can customize their page by deciding to start at zero and work your way up to a goal or by starting at a number and taking away.  I start at zero and when you reach twenty points you go back to zero.  Once you get to twenty you get to choose from the treasure chest. You can reward individual children or groups of children.  You also get to choose what you are rewarding for and what you are taking points away for.  My rewards for good behavior are for the following- Creativity, Great Insight, Compliment, Hard Work, Helping Others, and Making good choices.  My points are taken for the following behavior- Disrespect, Tattling, Hurting Others, No self discipline and interrupting.  Many of the 'negative' behaviors I do not use such as interrupting or tattling.  Those only used when it 

becomes an issue.   

At the end of each day you can open up a circle graph that will show you the positive and negative for the day for the whole class.  You can also open for each individual child however I never do this with the whole class.  In the graph you will see a percentage of what the positive/negative behavior was.  Sometimes we check this and sometimes we skip this at the end of the day.  It all depends on the behavior and the time we have left.  My students love to see how we did as a class.  They try and reach for 100% positive many days.  You can also email a child's report to their parents so their parents can see what the issue is and when it is happening.  Overall I just love this site, my students love this site and my new teammates at my new school were so excited when I show it to them.  If you are looking for something new to help spice up your classroom management I highly recommend you check out ClassDojo.com!