Class Dojo In Korea: Setting it All Up

To set up Class Dojo in Korea you’ll need to

• talk to your coteachers (you don’t need their permission but you might want to let them know what you’re doing and if they want to help)
• get a class roster
• consider English names
• prepare a powerpoint or something to explain it to the students
• discuss your possibilities for rewards – green mileage, pizza parties, candy, chocopies, etc

You’ll also need to do three things

1. decide how you want to lay it out (students, groups or classes)
2. create negative and positive points
3. choose and purchase rewards

Layout

Individual Students

You give points to, or take them away from the individual student.

PROS:

• Every individual can see how they’re doing
• No one has to rely on, or police a group to get points. It’s all personal responsibility
• You can track students – who might be really shy/behind, who’s fluent.
• You could learn some names

CONS:

• It puts students too much on the spot.
• It could create too much competition, or embarrassment for  having too many minus (or even too many plus) points.

When I first thought about doing class dojo – this seemed like an overwhelming option. I have 835 students. That’s a lot to keep track of.

Then I felt like I would probably really only marking the students who were really good or really bad while the rest would remain completely neutral. Although, I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. A lot of students just are – they go to class and do what they need to do but they don’t volunteer or act out. I was right that super high level students got a lot of points while some “bad” students had minus 2 or three. But the neutral students began to start volunteering more or getting a little more competitive to get points.

 

If you don’t see students very much, can’t get class lists or just want to get started I would recommend just using it at their most basic form -their class numbers:

But if you can get a hold of the class lists (ask your coteachers!) you can copy and paste their names into hanguel (blurred out for student safety)

And finally if you want to use English names (highly recommended) you can ask students to write down names on a paper or individual cards and you can use their English names, number and real name

Class Groups

If you use tables or groups you can do two options:

You can make a group as a single student:

Or, recently, Class Dojo allows you to put students into groups (and change the groups whenever you want)

You can see the students avatars stay the same (for instance Stitch – Daeun is in “Black Team”) and her avatar stays the same on the team avatar. When you give a point to the whole group everyone in the team will get a point.

Classes

 

Make each class as a single student and then you can award points to the class based on class-wide behavior.

Choose Your Positives and Negatives

How can students gain and lose points?

This is hard because you have to dig deep and decide what matters most to you.

I ended up choosing a hodge-podge of things that mattered to my classroom and class dynamic.

Positive – you can gain points for…

Bonus – If a student comes to talk to me about anything in English outside of class I will slip a bonus point in. I think it’s deserved because this usually makes students nervous.

Being a good listener – if I ask a question and Milla is the only person who answers, she’ll probably get this point. The students don’t know about this one either and that’s how I like this. This is a little surprise point that I give for students who are attentive. I’ve also noticed some students actively taking notes in my class (very rare) so I’ll give them one of these.

Helping Others – I have some “special-children” (my coteacher’s word) in my class. Other students are super sweet and helpful with them – so they can get an extra point here or there.

Volunteered – Really the only way to get points. If a student volunteered and spoke English, they’ll get a point.

Won a Game – we play boggle and do all sorts of little games here and there.

Working Hard – When the whole class is messing around and there is that one super studious kid not messing around… boom. Point.

Negative- you can lose points for…

Bullying – I will take -2 points if you are obviously bullying. I’ve had a fistfight in my class before – and I’m tired of the wonktta stuff.

Didn’t Clean Up – leaving a bunch of crap on the desks and/or writing on the desk. I can’t stop them from writing on the desks but when they leave it needs to be gone

Disrespect – Not sure why I keep this one. It’s similar to bullying but happens to teachers some times. I’ve taken this one when students are really rude to my coteachers.

Late To Class– 5 minutes is late. They just had a 10 minute passing period so if they’re that late it means they’ve been messing around for a solid 15 minutes. That’s too long.

No Books–  At first I didn’t care. But on the days that I have to cram a full chapter into a 45 minute lesson plan I get a little annoyed with the lack of book. The coteachers seem to like this one too, “number thirty seven has no book!” (coteachers aren’t actively using English names) they call across the room. I take a point.

Not Listening / Not Working – (I really should combine these) these are really the same and I should combine them. These are my most common points to take away – when students are playing tag in class or generally ignoring the assignment.

Deciding on Rewards

So you get to click on a student/group/class and reward or take away points. Awesome. What becomes of that?

You need to decide on what students can gain by having X amount of points. And what happens if they ever get minus X points. It will really depend on how you do it (group/student/class).

Some ideas:

• change their  avatar (everyone is a little monster avatar – they can change it to anything they want)
• candy
• a prize box with pencils or chocopies
• Green Mileage points (ask your coteachers)
• X points for the whole class and we can watch a movie
• X points for the whole class and we can go to the computer lab
• X points for the whole class and we can have a party / game day
• The student with the most points gets a gift certificate
• The student with the most points gets a private luncheon with other winning students

In my class students can change their avatars when they get 10 points (also for every 10 points they get 1 green mileage point)

I provide some pre-loaded pictures with all kinds of ideas. But I let them pick whatever they want. So far, I’ve had all kinds of pictures – Anonymous masks, Finn, Pooh Bear, famous Korean baseball players and, of course, Exo guys.

At 20 points I’ll give out candy and +2 green mileage

30 points – something from the prize box and +3 green mileage.

The students with the most points should be given a little pizza party or some kind of major thing at the end of the school year. I’m working with the budget with this one.

If the whole class can get 400 points (only about 10 points per person) we can watch a movie, play a game, or go to the computer lab. The class can decide.

Waygook has other ideas too. 

When you lose points?

That was all carrot – what about the stick?

-5 points means you lose -2 Green Mileage (my co-teacher’s idea) and you have to sit with me during class. You can earn your points back so essentially you’re stuck with me until you gain your points back.

-10 points means you lose a whopping -4 Green Mileage and you stay after-school to muck out my English Classroom. Dusting, mopping, organizing. You. Will. Clean. This is an acceptable punishment at my school, check with yours.

No one has ever gone -10 or even close.

Coordinating With Co-Teachers

I truly think you aren’t ready to do this until you have everything thought through and written down. If you go in, guns blazing “I found this really cool website, it tracks points and it will really help my classes.” You might get shot down like my husband was “we already have that, it’s called Green Mileage Points.”

No. But this is not Green Mileage. I don’t have access to Green Mileage and I really don’t have control of some of my students.

If you go in wrong, you could lose face with co-teachers. “So, uh, you aren’t doing your only job in my class and I need this website to do your job.”

The best thing (probably) is to sit down with them and show them the site. Nurse all of the functions: It’s got a timer, we can take attendance, we can change discipline, etc. We can pick students at random and force them to speak English! (my students say “landom” sometimes)

Show them a chart – when they get 10 points then we can X.

Ask them for their imput. I couldn’t show them the site in full, but I printed out a sheet for them – here’s how they lose points/gain points… here’s what I want to do. What do you think?

The best thing I’ve done was approach the department head and said “I read about this online, so many foreign teachers used this and their students spoke a lot more English. I really think it would help students to speak more English.”

That’s all it took.

I worked with them to make sure they liked the system. We tried to coordinate phones into it with minmal luck. That would be the most ideal – a coteacher can just pull out their phone and bam! plus points!

Introducing it to Students

I think you could realistically introduce this whenever you want. It doesn’t have to be at the start of a new semester. Just introduce it – then move on and use it actively.

I already had a measure in place with stamps. It was convoluted. I had to walk around the classroom and waste time opening books and giving out stamps. Some students were irked by the sudden switch from stamps to dojo points. But the coteachers stepped in an aggressively decided “who are you to question why?! (yours is just to do or die)” I’ve given some students consolation prizes (literally) for stamps, but for the most part, we moved into Class Dojo with a guns’ a blazin’ attitude.

To introduce it to them, I used a power point. I showed them how to gain and lose points. Mostly we focused on what happens when they gain points. Then, before anyone could get confused, I gave them ample opportunity to gain points. For the first few weeks I gave loads of chances to get points.

My co-teachers seemed a smidgeon reluctant and dropped subtle hints that they weren’t happy. But after seeing so many hands raised and so many volunteers, we’re comfortably working together to do points.

I really regret nothing. It was certainly a lot of work to get it started to keep track of the points and use my money to get rewards but it’s probably the reason I’m staying for a third year – the chaos of my classrooms before classdojo was just not a sustainable system.