Student Behavior Management

Since it's going to be several weeks before I am able to be in my classroom, I am trying to work ahead and get as much done as possible at home.  Working at home in the air conditioning definitely has its perks, but I've already thought of several resources or materials I need in order to complete certain projects.  And they are all at school.

I've seen many great examples of behavior clip charts on Pinterest, and was inspired to make a sports themed chart to go with our building-wide theme.

I actually use silver and gold for the top two colors, but since those are hard to replicate on a computer, I used blue and purple instead for the version I posted in my TpT store.  I first started using gold and silver last year to give my "naturally" well-behaved students something to aim for.  The years prior I had several students who would stay on green all year, with very little effort.  After discussing this fact with some of my colleagues, we decided to add silver and gold above green.  Students have to give an extra effort in order to progress to those colors, like helping a classmate, or cleaning up areas of the classroom without being asked.  When a student made it to silver or gold, they received a star of that color to take home and share with their families.  The parent response was very positive and enthusiastic, especially when students who have difficulty using self-control were able to achieve those colors.  

We also allow students to move up and down the scale of colors, with the exception being landing on red.  Since red is reserved for major offenses (foul language, cheating, physically harming someone), once a child is on red, that is where they stay for the remainder of that day.  But I found that allowing students on yellow and pink the opportunity to redeem themselves had a positive effect on the classroom environment.  In past years, students who made it to yellow before lunchtime usually shut down and gave no effort to make wise choices the remainder of the day.  They knew they were on yellow and were staying there, so what was the point in trying to be good.  Everyone suffered, and I found this resulted in a "disturbance in the force."  This year my grade level team decided to try allowing students to work their way back to green to see if that would prevent those "shut down" behaviors.  I noticed a remarkable difference in student attitudes, and was kicking myself that I hadn't done this long ago.  There were several students in my classroom last year who benefited from this type of approach.  After I would move a student's color, I reminded them that they had the chance to go back to green, and they immediately began the work of making the type of behavior choices that would get them back on green.  Besides, I am always preaching to my students that it is okay to make mistakes, as long as we learn from them, and this new behavior system is much more in keeping with that theme.  I also felt more freedom to move clips to yellow or pink, knowing that I could move them back to green.  In the past I always gave a child more than a few verbal reminders before changing colors, because I knew that once he or she was on yellow, I was going to be dealing with either tears, sinister I'm-plotting-your-demise looks, or sullen refusal-to-participate-in-anything-the-rest-of-the-day behaviors. With this new system I had far less of those undesirable responses, and was able to concentrate on things other than behavior management.  Here's hoping that the new system works just as well with my new "crop" of kiddos!