ClassDojo

If you don't already know how wonderful Class Dojo is, I highly encourage you to sign up for this FREE service to experience first hand how it can shape the lives of students with autism.   ( www.classdojo.com )

Class Dojo is a service that I use to provide visual feedback to my students about their behaviors during speech sessions. My students with autism are visual learners and the "tallying" of behavior "points" helps motivate them to use more "expected" behaviors across our sessions. Class Dojo is an easy way to keep track of the behaviors as they happen and provide instant feedback without saying a word! 

Most of my students love the avatars.  They seem to also feel very empowered and in control of their own behaviors when using Class Dojo.  I have one student that is so motivated to use Class Dojo that he asks for it as we start our individual speech sessions. 

What's great about this website is that you can customize the positive and negative behaviors to meet the specific needs of a student or class. For example, with one of my students, the green/ positive points are given for "whole body listening" and asking questions (his targeted speech goals).  The red/ negative points are given for when he is "moving too much" or when he is taking all the "talk time."

When I run groups, I also use Class Dojo to motivate the entire class to meet my goals of good group participation including: seated with the group,  looking at the speaker, quiet  listening and safe hands.  If the group is doing all this, I can give everyone positive points all at once. If someone breaks from our group plan, then I can also give individual points (positive or negative). 

At the end of sessions, I can show the class or student a graph of how much positive vs. negative behaviors they used. Even better than that, I can show students exactly which behaviors they are great at, and which they need to improve on. 

I mostly use it on my computer or iPad. If using it on an iPad, it seems you have be connected to the Internet. In addition, it is a good idea to set up the targeted behaviors from a computer or laptop.  If working with a class, I can see how using it with apple TV would work perfectly! 

I don't even use Class Dojo to its fullest potential. There are options to print or email reports to parents and have student and parent logins. 

I know Class Dojo is designed for classroom management, but as a speech therapist, I love it in my individual sessions too!