Beautiful Behavior

I'm once again linking up with Delightfully Dedicated for her summer series. This week is all about classroom behavior.

There are endless plans for classroom management, and I've tried quite a few. Last year I used a behavior scale in which students could move up or down. The consequences for moving down are missing 5 minutes of recess, writing up a behavior action plan, or going to the office (for extreme circumstances only). Then consequences for moving up are:

a) dojo points
b) pawprint
c) King card

a) Dojo points: I began using class dojo last year. The kids loved it! They could create an avatar and earn dojo points towards a class prize. Parents could keep track of their child's behavior from home and make comments or send messages. It really is a valuable tool for school/home communication.

b) Pawprints: Our school has a reward system called "Paw-sitive Passes". Students or entire classes can earn pawprints from any staff member and get acknowledged monthly during their lunch period. Classrooms with the most paws per month get to keep a trophy in their room for the entire month.

c) King Card: Our local King's Variety Store offers coupons for students to come get a prize out of their treasure chest.

These are all effective extrinsic awards, but as a school we wanted to work on more of an intrinsic approach. So this year we are going to begin Stephen Covey's Leader in Me process.

 If you haven't had a chance to read this book, I highly suggest it. It teaches kids (and staff) how to use the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to strengthen their personal lives as well as relationships with others. We've already had the first session of staff training. I'll keep you updated as we roll out this process to see how it's working. I'm so excited to get started!

Head on back to Delighfully Dedicated to see more beautiful behavior!