I teach 7th and 8th grade in an urban district in Upstate NY. It is a school that has only recently expanded from preK-6 to preK-8. For those of you that are new to middle school, that means there is lots of room to grow, and bugs to work out as we prepare our school for middle school students. Middle school kids need a lot of structure and different structure than elementary.
I am working on ways to instill that in my classroom, and to uphold high behavioral expectations and create the kind of classroom culture that I want, within the walls of my classroom.
I wanted to share some of the free resources that I have been using to do that:
- Timers. These can be used for bellwork, during activities, or any time to want to add structure and constrain them. These timers can be accessed online, or downloaded and added directly to the smartboard files. They include a candle buring, a bomb about to explode, a runner, and many others that students find engaging.
Another tool that I have used in the website classdojo. It allows for public or private tallying of 'dojo points' for any behaviors that you set. You can track positive and negative, and can have students track behaviors on the smartboard, or track them yourself through an ipad, iphone, or computer and then check in between/after activities. Students get to pick a cute monster icon (my middle school kids were very excited about that) and then it can change as they get more points.I also am including the list of rewards that I posted, just for ideas. These can obviously be anything that you want. Finally, classdojo can be a great behavioral tracking tool to use with RTI and collect/track data. I plan to post much more frequently, but I hope this is of some use to you.
