Who is a Class Dojo Mentor?

Who is a Class Dojo Mentor? Well, it is me I got the amazing news this Wednesday from the amazing Class Dojo team.  Guess what I heard in my head when I read this email" I know you like it sweet, so you can have your cake, Give you something good to celebrate, So make a wish, I'll make it like your birthday everyday." Katy Perry Birthday
Take a look at the super cool email I received.

So, I guess I can stop singing when I see the Class Dojo Mentor Community on Facebook " Cause you're too sexy, beautiful, and everybody wants a taste, that's why(that's why) I still get jealous."
Well, if that was not enough Class Dojo had a super week as well the were voted Best Start Up. Well deserved Class Dojo.  Truly I have been using Class Dojo for about 4 years and I really love it. I love the support and I love the community of educators that I have been a part of and now a new learning community the Class Dojo Mentor Group.  Most importantly I love the way it has transformed my classroom room into a real community of learners who begin to self regulate. Looks like they might have this as their soundtrack" Got Chucks on with St. Laurent, Gotta Kiss myself I am too pretty, I'm too hot ( hot damn) Called a police and fireman."

So,  I thought I need to go in and make some changes to our Class Dojo now that I am a fancy Class Dojo Mentor, also we are having a PD share out session this month at my school to talk about what is working in terms of behavior in implementing Conscious Discipline in our classroom.  This is an interesting program my daughter used in preschool and is suppose to develop a community of learners in your classroom. I have found that some of the language I have learned is super helpful. If you have not had experience working with students in poverty this program really is helpful into understanding their behaviors, I found it very affirming because I have spent most of my career in schools of need and I have had training in the process to adopt my daughter from the foster program.

Anyway, so I have been sort of integrating the 7 basic skills into my ClassDojo. I have put one of the skills as a behavior on Class Dojo at a time and focusing on this and really rewarding for this skill, this is after we did the lesson and implemented the vocabulary into our classroom. What I have found is I spent to much time on one basic skill so I just inputed all the 7 basic skills so they are there and ready to go and ready to remind me to move on as well as spiral back to hit some previously learned skills. While doing this I came upon an article about how a teacher used Class Dojo for small group instruction. Here is the link to the article: https://storify.com/jennakleine/classdojochat-going-beyond-behavior-w-classdojo.
Really, Cool, right, this will give teachers very specific information about student learning some examples of what she did was create a behavior for annotated text. So, I thought I need to amp up our ClassDojo behaviors. I have just inputed everything I need into the behaviors it is a little awkward because it is so many behaviors but I think it will really help me look for these skills, standards all day long and use the specific language. I equate this to posting the standards in a place where you can see them, because as teachers we are running 6 million "open windows" in our brain at all times and some get pushed back or forgotten.  Anyway, I feel a weight has been lifted off my shoulders because, I inputed the, 7 basic skills of Conscious Discipline, 8 math practice standards, 6 traits of writing, NGSS,Reading CAFE, and because I have several English learners Speaking and Listening CCSS.  Wow! I feel so much more organized and I feel like I have a ton new ideas of how to more fluidly integrate these skills into my lessons. Check out some of my behaviors. Well most of them!

I now have a super comprehensive template and I can go back in and add more specifics (so basically " I got some blank spaces baby, and I'll write their names.") for example we are working on a biography unit of study, for Writing organization I could add student, organizes biography in chronological order, Math we are working on multiplication and division we could add, MP 8 students understands/compares repeated addition in multiplication.
One completely new idea I am going to add to my Reading Workshop is to include and ipad recording station, where students record their listening and speaking skills, at an independent center. So, right now I have a group of 5 I work with and we have begun to integrate Edmodo into this guided group, and two other groups reading online and reading hard books. This would really help me gain a ton of data and another way to engage students in powerful learning. I will post next week on our progress with looking forward to collecting more data and being more effective because I am more prepared and organized. HAPPY CLASS DOJO MENTOR DAY!