Monday, November 26, 2012

Class Dojo - points for speaking French

I have recently discovered one of THE most amazing motivators for students: Class Dojo! With a simple "PING!" students will do ANYTHING for a point on Class Dojo - and that includes, yes, speaking en Français! You assign a cute little furry avatar to each student, and as long as you have wireless and a data projector in your room, you can keep Class Dojo on all day. You can even assign points straight from your Iphone/Ipod - simply download the Class Dojo app! 

You can create specific "badges", such as "Spoke in French", or negative badges that take away points, such as "Spoke English". I also created a badge for "Mlle. spoke in English" - with that one, the entire class gets a point. They love getting that one! There are also generic badges that say "Hard Work" or "Teamwork", etc. 

Tally up points as a class, or individually. We usually pick a goal at the beginning of every week, for example, 500 points. If we gather up all the points, they can chose a "free time" activity to do at some point the following week (can be accounted for through QDPA). 

It honestly works like magic - the first day I introduced it, I just had it up on the data projector, and as students walked in and got to their seats I gave them the "Gets to work right away" point - you should have seen how fast the others followed! On top of it all, I could have heard a pin drop! Give it a try and let me know what you think! 

Another post by Madame Wiebe also talks about ways to get students to speak French - great read! 

If you know of any other games/techniques, please post bellow! 



5 comments:

  1. Thanks for this link Madame Milou. It sounds like the dojo is like having very motivating clear targets posted and visible - yay!

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    1. This looks fantastic, thank you! There are clearly many advantages to speaking French as a second language!

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  2. ooohh I am so happy to have found a French teacher's blog with so many great ideas and resources! I'm a student teacher of French so I'll definitely be taking note of ideas such as this one and try them out in my future classroom. :)

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    1. Thank you for posting Miss Melanie! If I can be of any help, please let me know! Are you a student teacher in Canada or the US? Take care and happy holidays!

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  3. I downloaded this app in September but have yet to use it. Good to hear that it works, hopefully that will kick my butt into gear!
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