Behavior To Bark About

Oh behavior management... I know everyone has what works for them, but I have really been digging the clip chart. I used it all last year, and really appreciated the way it lets you focus on the positive. For example, if you see child A doing too much talking, you can praise Child B for working so quietly and let them move their clip up. This let’s child A know he’s not doing the right thing, without him having to move his clip down. Of course, there are consequences and kids do move their clips down for things like hitting, swearing, etc. Last year I didn’t have a theme, so I recreated Babbling Abby’s adorable guitar clip chart.

This year I racked my brain for something similar I could make that would fit my dog theme. I finally settled on dog houses. I pared down to five of them so that they would be a better fit for the behavior marks in our school’s agenda. Each child has an agenda with a box for each day that has three smaller boxes – red, yellow, green, for their behavior that day. We simply check the box they earned. The three bottom tiers of my new clip chart line directly up with that and if they get higher than green on the clip chart they get a star sticker over the box. I’ll take a picture once school starts because I’m sure that explanation is confusing. Here’s the dog houses all put together:

Then, I decided to make monthly behavior calendars that I could put in their folders. At the end of each day the kids can color in a box showing their color for the day, like this:

I also put a legend along the side so that parents have a reminder of what each color means.

Both the doghouses and the calendars are included in my Doggone Good Behavior Set.

Also included are posters for each color that you can print and laminate if you don’t want to make the dog houses.

As for rewards for those star stickers, once kids get to a pre-determined amount of star stickers for moving up to blue or purple they have a choice. Last year they just went to the treasure box. I’m still going to use the treasure box this year, but I’m also going to give them the option of picking a reward out of a catalog. I saw this adorable idea on Katie’s blog over at Little Warriors. With her blessing I’ve made it into a dog theme.

You can get the Behavior to Bark About Catalog here.

So that’s what works for me! Anyone have any suggestions to make this route better?? What works for you?