Tracking Classroom Behavior

It never fails. February hits and the kids go CRAZY! It might be the weather, it might be the love in the air but I can tell you every year around this time I have to revamp my behavior routines. Here is one of my favorites that I pull out from time to time. 

The basis of this routine is to TRACK behavior. How many times a day do you have to redirect students? How many times to do you stop because of a distraction during a whole group lesson? Isn't it frustrating? All you need to put an end to the constant disruptions is a clicker counter like this: (this is an affiliate link which means if you click and buy I get a small amount at no cost to you. This helps keep my blog up and running, thank you!) 


Click on the picture or HERE to get one on Amazon.
I only bring out this extra layer of behavior management when things go a little nutty. I blogged about my regular classroom behavior management routine HERE if you want to read about that. 



1. On day one click the clicker every time any student interrupts, disrupts, or the class has to be redirected. DON'T TELL the class you are keeping track. The purpose of this first day is to get a baseline. I click every single disruption throughout the day so I can get an accurate idea of just how unruly we are. 

2. At the end of the day TELL the students what you were up to (many of them will be curious). Create a graph to show them just how many disruptions you had and graph it on a large piece of chart paper.

3. The next day keep track again. This little tracker is handy enough to just keep in your hand while you are teaching so it is pretty easy to do. Some students will start to catch on and quiet their groups down without you saying a word when they hear the noise of the clicker. 

4. At the end of day 2 add your total to the chart. Ask the students, "Did we do better?" (hopefully you did!) Make a big deal about their new "ALL TIME BEST" score and encourage them to beat it tomorrow. 

Now from here you just keep going. Each day keep track and I guarantee you they will get better and better every day. Here is an example of one of my charts: 

Every time we got an "All time best" score we had a little class celebration.  I always placed a smiley face sticker on the chart to show those days. If you look up close you can also see that I didn't mark half days and I wrote down when we had a day off. Things like that make a difference when it comes to behavior. Our celebrations were extra recess, GoNoodle time (this was way before Go Noodle though but same idea), and fun things that they voted for like extra drawing time, art projects, and extra fun Friday centers. None of it cost me any money! 

That is one easy way to get a handle on the crazy during the next few weeks. 6 weeks or so and we are cruising again with our normal routines without the unnecessary interruptions. It is like GOLD I tell ya! 

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