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!
This app was probably one of the first I ever bought. Although it is traditionally for art or drawing, it is easily adaptable to help kids with autism use expected behaviors during therapy or classroom sessions. It can provide visual support and real time feedback for kids so that they know how other people feel about their actions.
I often use the stickers when tracking behavior. This makes the tracking fun and playful. Some kids get really into the funny noises that you can hear when you "paste" a sticker on the board. This also creates a strong motivator to act in a positive manner so that they can earn the stickers
Here are just some specific examples of how I modify this app to help give real time feedback on behaviors:
1) I use the stickers (located at the bottom of the screen) to keep track of how many positive behaviors the student has. I might keep track of how many comments a student does during a play session. I might also keep track of how many questions the student asks of other people. Sometimes, I give stickers to keep track of how many times the student initiated an interaction with a peer. It's nice to use as a visual reinforcer and a great way to keep track of how much success they had across the session.
2) I use a smily face to show every time I have a positive thought about the other student. If it is a bigger more important thought, I might change the sticker to be big (a choice once you press the stamp icon (the stamp icon is the 4th from the left on bottom).
2) I modify Michelle Garcia Winner's curriculum to show students when I have "green" (positive, comfortable, happy, expected), "yellow" (confused, slightly unexpected, weird) or "red" (uncomfortable, unexpected) thoughts. There are actually yellow, red and green speech bubbles that I put on the page and use the stickers to visually illustrate each of my thoughts as they happen. We can talk about each behavior right then in the moment, or wait until a different time too.
3) I often use Doodle Buddy on the fly to replace my pen and paper. In fact, it enhances my old analog tools because it provides colors for when I don't have a pencil box with me. As one example, I've modified Kari Dunn Buron's Incredible 5 point scale in the heat of a moment to illustrate where my student's behaviors fell on the 5 point scale vs. where they should have been based on what happened. The sound for the emoticon stickers can be particularly funny and helpful when trying to explain how behaviors are perceived by others.
The best part about using visual supports for behavior management is that I do not have to make any comments as behaviors happen. I can mark down my feelings about a behavior or tally the behavior. Usually, the visual cue can be enough to help guide the behaviors to being more expected than unexpected. Making it digital and having it include sound just enhances the reward factor for my students.
