Badges and Recongition

Our second semester starts shortly, and I am eager to start working in some new programs.  I have behaviour and recognition programs in place, but I want to alter them to add some interest.  I have more research and planning to do, but I think that I'll focus on using Edmodo as mode of transmission for the rewards.  I'll put something up in class too, but Edmodo badges have an alluring effect on my students.  Having said that, I need to focus more on giving out badges for day-to-day and weekly things.  My students love them, and I want to give them more opportunities to earn them.

Just some things I have been thinking on.

Crafting - Part Two

We've been back in Kuwait for a couple pf days now, and Amanda and I are already busy getting our classrooms and plans together.  I'm lucky enough to be teaching in a brand new room (albeit a portable), so it is a blank canvas.  They are still working on the room, though, so I'll have to wait a bit longer to get some of my things set up.

I am, however, preparing and laminating a lot of material for the first few days (and for the rest of the year, really).  I'm creating a "Crafting Corner" where students will be able to practice certain skills.  I will post a skill tree every few weeks, so the students can see all of the skills/steps they will be working on.  When they finish one step (worksheet, activity, etc) they can move on to the next.  The final step is a short written test that covers all areas of that skill (verb tenses for instance).  The students that complete all steps and get 80% or higher on the final test will be awarded a badge on Edmodo.  However, if the students get below 80% they will not be awarded a badge.  Instead, they are able to retake the test as many times as they want until they do.  I want this to be a positive experience, and I want to get them interested in accruing and practicing these skills.  The crafting will take place outside of regular lessons, and I will let them take the sheets home (not the test, though).  I know that a lot of my students love getting badges, stickers, or any other kind of recognition (yes even those moody 9s and 10s), so I foresee a lot of them getting behind this.  The ones that aren't interested will not be forced to do it, but I imagine they will consider it when they see the rewards and higher marks their friends get from practicing their skills.  I've thrown two examples of these skill crafting trees up on Google Documents, so click here if you are interested in using something like them.

Time to play a little Xbox before hitting the sack.

Behaviour Points Using Class Dojo

In a previous post, I wrote about how the students will be graded in my classroom next year.  I touched on the idea of XP, and how those experience points will essentially be their marks on assignments while the levels they achieve will be their grades.  In this post I am going to write about another point system I will be introducing next year: Behaviour Points.

In short, I'll call these points BPs.  Teachers all over the world use a behaviour management system that revolves around points and rewards.  I'm not reinventing the wheel by any means, but I will be integrating this management system into my class narrative and theme.

The Class Dojo homepage.

This past year I stumbled onto the classroom management system Class Dojo, and it was a stress-saver.  I implemented it into my grade 8 class in November, and they immediately loved it.  Their system is an avatar based reward and consequence system.  I can assign points based on defined actions (1 positive point for raising a hand or 1 negative point for coming in late).  During every class I would put the website up on the interactive whiteboard, so that students always knew where they were in terms of points.  I set up a system where if they got 10 points in a week they would get to choose a reward like sitting in the teacher's chair or eating in class.  If the entire class earned 75% positive in the course of a week we had a whole class reward like playing soccer for 20 minutes or having free personal activity time.  Only the kids with -1 or higher were allowed to participate in the whole class rewards.  This system worked wonders in my class, as I had kids invested in the game nature of the program.  They wanted to earn points, win the week.  Add to that the fact that kids can create their own avatars and I can e-mail parents beautiful behaviour reports. It is a fantastic free classroom management tool that I suggest every teacher try out.

I will be using Class Dojo next year, but I will be changing how I use it.  This year I reset the points each week, so that the students had a fresh start.  Next year I will use it more as a currency system.  Students will earn positive BPs for things like raising hands, completing homework, staying on task, helping others, etc.  They will earn negative BPs (and therefore lose points) for things like being late to class, not doing homework, speaking out, and using Arabic in class (a problem in a bilingual school, as the students have been caught saying some nasty things - also we are trying to promote their development of English skills).

An example of the point distribution for my grade eights.
Alaa has earned her reward!

At any time students will be able to spend their BPs on 'loot.'  For instance, 5BP would buy a student a pencil or pen, 10BP no homework for one night, 15BP a treat, 35BP 15 minutes of quiet free time, etc.  100BP would buy a student soccer for 25 minutes.  Obviously soccer costs a lot of points and an individual student would have to save for an entire semester to earn something like that.  However, I want to promote cooperation and group work.  Since the students will already be in guilds (groups) I will allow them to combine or donate points to each other in order to claim loot.  If Ahmed doesn't have a pencil and he has no BP left, he can ask Tom if he can spare 5BP from his cache of 30BP.  In order to get the soccer reward, my students will have to work together to combine their points.

As of right now, Class Dojo doesn't seem to allow for erasing a particular student's points (as in spending them on a reward), so I hope that they allow this in the future.  If not I'm sure I can figure out a work around to it.  I will be using Class Dojo simply because it is a clean and easy way to manage and track my students' behaviour.

Crafting...as motivation to practice

I've read a lot over the last year about trying to get kids to continue their learning after they've left school for the day, week, or year.  It is an especially difficult problem here in Kuwait, as a lot of the families that I have interacted with seem to think that learning stops when the kid leaves school and time at the house is meant for being with family.  I'm not knocking family here, but if a child doesn't continue to work on the learned skills at home than they will quickly become stagnant and useless to them.  The trick, I suppose, is getting that student to want to keep learning.  Sometimes that type of thinking seems like a lot of alchemy, but as educators we have to at least try.

So, my solution for next year comes in a package I'm calling crafting.  I am not the first person to think of this term or idea as it relates to education (and gamfiication of education), but I honestly can't remember all of the places I've seen it mentioned.  I'm not taking sole credit for the concept, let's put it that way.

Since my grade eight class is themed around medieval fantasy, I thought that calling the motivated extra-learning system crafting was a good place to start.  Simply speaking, I'm going to keep a few folders of extra work based on concepts and skills we've developed in class.  Students can choose to try these extra bits of work without the fear of failure, but with the hope of achievement.

As an example, let's say that we've worked on using present and present progressive verbs in class.  I will select around 10 pieces of bonus work based on present verb tense that the students can do at their leisure.  If they finish class work early or if they want to have some extra practice over the weekend, the students can choose to take on these extra challenges.  Every one they complete moves them closer to becoming a MASTER CRAFTER in that particular area.  Once they have finished, with correct answers, the ten practice sheets, they can try to take the Master Crafter challenge quiz.  If they get 90-100% on it than they will earn the Master Present Tense Verb (or just Master PTV) achievement badge.  They can keep retrying the test until they do reach the pass threshold.

From my perspective they are solidifying core concepts, and from their perspective they are achieving recognition for being very good at something.  I would, of course, have a variety of these crafting categories based on the learning we do in class.  If they get a hold of 5 badges, I might set up another reward.  It is a bit of intrinsic and a bit of extrinsic.  The students will want the badges, but a lot of that desire comes from achieving in the eyes of their peers.  An award certificate would be another great way to show their achievement.  My soon-to-be wife has made some awesome end of the year ones for her grade 2s (and for K-6).  She's got them on sale now on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Any other ideas for this sort of system?  Any thoughts about the Themed Year in general?  Leave a comment!