Teri Peters's List: Annotated Bibliography-BMS & Parent/Teach Communication

I found this article on EBSCOHost. Unfortunately, this is not in English but I'm hoping I can get a decent translation. From the abstract and the title, this article appears to be exactly what I'm looking for. The abstract makes the point that the classroom is a place where digital natives and digital immigrants coexist so we have to find new ways of addressing classroom management. The links in the article are also helpful.

Identifies common teacher attitudes towards classroom management and describes how these beliefs are not entirely true, and not entirely false. This is a good article to start a discussion on classroom management since I think most of my teachers - myself included - will find that they subscribe to at least 1 or 2 of these misconceptions. #2 is helpful for Action Research presentation.

Great article about the benefits of creating relationships with community and family and HOW to get community and family involved. Used in ARP presentation to emphasize importance of communication between school and home. This has helped me to see that I need to make a greater effort to communicate with the parents. I think this would be especially helpful with the few challenging kids we have. I have one child who is very disrespectful to his teachers but I know that he comes from a family that values respect. I asked him if he ever spoke to his mom the way he speaks to his teachers. He said, "No, she's my mom." Overlapping his home and school spheres could help him recognize that his behavior should be consistent between the two.

This video demonstrates Power Teaching by Whole Brain Teaching. I am particularly interested in the way that the teacher gives frequent feedback with the "oh, yeah" and "mighty groan." It's also significant that the entire class gets rewarded/penalized--no chance for individual power struggles. Our school uses WBT classroom management (not the power teaching) so that we have consistency and because it is easy. However, it was good for me to watch this again. We need to be better at staying away from using this method as a way to address individual behaviors because when teacher gets caught up in a power struggle with individual student, it weakens the whole program for the entire class.

Great tutorial for Class Dojo. I like that it is customizable per class. I love the avatars and that the students have control over their avatars. I like the simplicity of +/- points. And, I love that teachers can send updates to parents with a click of a button. I need to figure out how to improve the quality of the internet at our school since that was the real motivation killer for my teachers. 

Great article by a teacher who used Class Dojo last year. She mentions that her students do not always see the Class Dojo screen on the Smart Board, but they do hear the sounds. One of the complaints my teachers had was that we didn't have a way to display the Class Dojo page. I wonder if the sounds are enough of a reward/deterrent?

We struggle with communication between school and parents. This article has really opened my eyes to the different challenges and concerns that parents have. I'm realizing that in order to improve communication, we need to know our parents better. I like that this article gives conversation prompts--that's what we need, a conversation with the parents.

I love the tips that this article gives! The ones that pertain to Class Dojo are: Set your objectives; Communicate High Expectations; Communicate early and often; communicate about the entire classroom, as well as individual students. The Class Dojo daily updates address each of those concerns.

Although this research was done in university classrooms, the findings can be applied to elementary/middle school classes. One of the factors that Class Dojo measures is attendance. The study shows that attendance has a direct impact on student achievement and that having a technological tool to measure and report attendance improves student attendance. Class Dojo measures attendance and creates reports.

Great research article that describes the process of getting teachers to use a course management system. I find the section describing why teachers choose to continue use or discontinue use very interesting and helpful. Knowing why the teachers become discouraged with CMS technology will help me to anticipate those reactions the next time I try to introduce this type of technology into our classrooms.