ClassDojo Goes Beyond Behavioral Rewards and into “Growth Mindset”

ClassDojo Goes Beyond Behavioral Rewards and into 'Growth Mindset'. (2016). Curriculum Review, 56(1), 5.

ClassDojo is a free communication app designed for in the classroom. It has been designed to help teachers manage classroom behaviors through fun monster characters. It also connects teachers, parents, and students who use it to share photos, videos, and messages through the school day. The makers of ClassDojo recently started offering short video lessons on “growth mindset” featuring the same monster cartoon characters.

 According to the article, “The growth mindset originated from Stanford University psychologist, Carol Dwek, who found that children are more likely to succeed if they believe that intelligence is developed through hard work and effort rather than something fixed at birth.” The ClassDojo Company worked directly with Dweck’s lab at Stanford to ensure that videos and lessons they offer are in line with “growth mindset” research. It’s also provided a link for the researchers directly into the classroom. The article also includes a testimony from a first grade teacher in Florida and the successes her classroom has had from viewing the growth mindset videos. She stated that, soon the children started following behaviors modeled by the characters. Her students would watch videos where the characters would work through problems such as trying and failing and it would show her students how to respond.

I currently use ClassDojo in an after school program, The Hub Project. All of the teachers in the after school program use ClassDojo to log attendance and as a behavior rewards program. ClassDojo has many wonderful resources that we use to connect to students and parents. Parents are given access codes at the beginning of the program and they can log in and see their child’s behavior during the Hub program. Parents can also directly message teachers through the App so classroom communication is seamless. ClassDojo can also be used for behavior tracking and reports. Teachers have the ability to create a donut graph or spreadsheet with the data. The data is then able to be printed and added to students’ files.  The growth mindset videos also tie in perfectly with our District’s professional development on Eric Jensen’s Teaching with Poverty in Mind. As a District we are working to change brains and growth mindset. ClassDojo’s growth mindset videos are perfect for teaching kids about perseverance, gratitude, and empathy. They also teach students about the power of YET and the magic of making mistakes. I would highly recommend ClassDojo to elementary and middle school teachers as well as after school program teachers as a classroom behavior rewards system, parent/home connection, as well as resources for growth mindset.