Community reviews for Class Charts

I think it is a good idea to track students' good behavior and when tracking bad behavior, the bad behavior might be negatively reinforced.

As a parent of a child with dysgraphia and ADHD which we have previously managed well at his junior (lower) school moving up to his high school has been a massive leap. Emotionally he's coped brilliantly, but educationally he has fallen a long way behind. Class Charts seemed to be a good way of keeping an eye on his behaviour, but it is most definitely a stick not a carrot. We even discussed with the teachers how we could use it as a way to incentivise him, by giving him £1 for his merits minus codes for each week, and we'd double it if he didn't get codes for a full week. We've had to ditch this idea because it relies on the teachers not making silly mistakes. None of it is clear, they seem to get codes with little explanation. The merits we can see who awarded them, but the codes do not show which lessons they were in. It only takes a few of those and the system falls apart. Admittedly, some of this is due to the way his school uses the system, but I can't see how they can all be trained to use it the same. To me it seems to take away common sense communication between school/student/parents. I have seen far too many arbitrary codes handed out. I try to ignore it now, but it really gets on my nerves. I have contacted the school with my concerns and asked them to review continuing to use it as I cannot see a way that it can be implemented without it causing concern. What is really worrying is that if a child had mental health problems it could really undermine their self-worth.

it is an efficient way to communicate as well as handle lecture from remote sessions.it is a really helpful tool for recent generation teachers

ClassCharts is a web service that is both an interactive seating chart and student behavior tracker. The logic of the site is that student location, both vis-à-vis the teacher and specific other students, has a significant impact on that student’s ability to focus on the content and skills being taught. This service provides longitudinal data concerning behaviors and performance. Graphical in nature, ClassCharts allows you, the user, to visualize behavioral data, even generating a weekly report. This resource has gamification elements, and is one step away from letting students become character classes in the classroom. Students can be “givers,” “healers,” or “stinkers.” BTW, the service is large enough now to command the attention of some LMSs. As time passes more shall be included. My concern is not for the product itself but its application. If the focus is on recognizing positive behaviors, as well as dealing with behaviors that detract from the teach-learning process, then ClassCharts is potentially a powerful, positive tool. If used by an exasperated teacher to make the world see just how much of a pain little Johnny really is, then maybe not so much. The commitment and learning curve to use is 5-15 minutes to become familiar with the system, and additional time to actually build your charts. This chart will work at all K-12 levels So, what is the cost? The demo version, very limited in function, is free. I could not find a price to buy the full version, but rather I was taken to a form to request a sales rep to speak with me. That is a turn-off. Website Link: http://www.classcharts.com/

I would recommend this app to any teacher who needs help with seating charts, managing behaviors or track scores. The down fall to this app is the students to not use it. It would be great if this app allowed students to individually track their own progress.

PROS: I love how easy it is to create and modify seating arrangements. I find the website to be intuitive and user friendly, therefore accessible for all technology comfort levels. Depending on your grade level, the energy required for the initial prep work to set up our class(es) can range from minimal to more substantial. I started the year with 190 students and I would guess it took me about 30 minutes to type in all of the new names. In the past I have used a high school TA to help with this process and they were easily able to navigate from class to class with limited direction from me. Some of my students are students I have had in the past, so it was easy to transfer them to the new class period and avoid re-typing their information. It is also very quick to add new students to a class directly from the seating chart. Before I started calling on students using the "random student" feature, there were only a select handful of kids that would volunteer answers. I instantly noticed an increase in student voice once I began using it and subsequently found more students starting to volunteer answers. It gave me a better understanding of where my students are at as a whole and I like that I can go back at anytime to review a record of responses for specific students (think IEP feedback). CONS: The program was clearly designed with elementary grades in mind, so I find some of the visual aspects a little immature. Each student is automatically assigned a random avatar and while some of them reflect positive or silly behavior, others reflect sad or negative moods. You can change individual avatars under the settings, but it can be time consuming when you have multiple classes. Additionally, you can change the seating view to have a basic silhouette image, however it routinely defaults back to the avatars. I end up changing the view to a silhouette, printing the seating charts (another pro feature!), and then displaying them under the document camera.

I use this every lesson, I like how I can have data at a glance about each student and that it is an easy way for me to recognise achievement and share that with parents.

Started using this a couple of months ago and had a great response from students & parents.

This website is a classroom management system that allows the teacher to track behaviors. This doesn't work for my classroom management style, but it will work well for some teachers. It is almost a virtual equivalent of the old style "move your pin to the yellow" type chart.