Behavior Management

Over the past year~ I have seen behavior management in classrooms take a turn away from the negative behaviors and focusing on the positive. School wideprograms such asPBIS~ CHAMPS~ and The Leader in Me encourage positive reinforcement with various incentives. My school has implementedPBISand we have seen a tremendouscut back in the amount of referrals and classroom disruptions due to poor behavior. Utilizing a school wide program allows all faculty members to acknowledge when a student is making good choices. Students earn and save "dollars" which can be used to purchase treasure box items to fun Friday activities to monthly reward parties.

My first year teaching was in a PreK classroom. We used 1-2-3 Magic and time-outs as our behavior management system. When I entered the primary grades~ I was required to use the "turn your card" system. I had conflicting feelings about this.

If you are not familiar~ students are given three colors- they begin their day on green~ first offense they turn their card to yellow and then to red for the next offense. What I did not like about this system was it focused on the negative behaviors.

After finding little success with the system~ I began to tweak it to me needs. I added blue and purple cards to enable the students to turn their card for a positive behavior. I immediately saw a change in the behaviors in my classroom. The students were eager to be caught making good choices so they could turn their card.

Many teacher blogs have some reference to the "clip chart" as their form of behavior management. The original idea belongs tohttp://www.newmanagement.com. Teachers around the world have taken his idea and tweaked it to fit their students' needs. The system includes three positive charts and three negative charts. The student begins the day on the middle (seventh) card. As positive behaviors are made and acknowledge~ the student moves positively up the chart. If poor behaviors are seen~ the student moves down the chart. By clipping down~ the student acknowledges the inappropriate behavior and has a consequence. For me~ the best part is the students can make better choices and move back up the chart.

I have to say~ I love it. I would love to hear what you use for behavior management in your classroom. Have you given the clip charta try yet?