This is my first year teaching third grade. This is also my first year to try classroom jobs. I have moved from first to third grade. In first grade I didn't do classroom jobs, but simply decided who would help out based on good behavior. Right now everyone in the class has a job. We rotate them every three weeks. I have some challenging students this year, on top of being new to the grade level. I am thinking of taking away classroom jobs and using them as incentive for good behavior. I use Class Dojo and our third grade money system as incentives, but it doesn't seem like it is doing enough. I thought I could use their Class Dojo points to determine the top Dojo winners and they could choose their job. The rest of the students would just need to make good choices to be chosen by me to do a task. I can't tell if this will help or hurt the dynamics of my classroom! I don't want to change things up on them, but I also want to do what will help me get more teaching in with less behavior issues! Any suggestions? Thanks so much!
Is their poor behavior related to their classroom jobs? If students were being irresponsible when they were completing a job (i.e. the office messenger isn't coming directly back to the classroom) then yes, I would take away their job for a while until they could demonstrate they could be responsible. If classroom jobs are more than you can manage right now, then I would also do away with them. I've never had classroom jobs - I've always taught my class that we are a team and we all pitch in. "See a need, fill a need". I guess I have linked jobs to behavior in that I say, "I need a responsible grade 1 for this job. Who can show me they are responsible?" when I need someone to do a special job. If you think doing away with jobs will improve behavior, then do away with them. The worst that can happen is that it won't make a difference, so you'll re-instate them.
This is a tough situation to manage. You either have to takeaway the job from the student (negative punishment) or punish him/her in some way for not doing the job correctly (positive punishment). If you take the job away from them, you might see an influx of student's not doing the jobs they don't want to do. They'll just misbehave to get out of doing something. So I could see a potential pitfall in taking away the responsibility, instead I'd suggest some other punishment that fits the bill.
