Today I'm going to talk about the Whole Brain Scoreboard! I talked a little bit about it here...
So the scoreboard is really simple... you can just draw a smile & a sad face on your board or write teacher and students on the board. But if you want to get a little more fancy (or cutsie) grab this freebie...
I have these laminated with magnets on the back and put them up on the whiteboard for our "master" scoreboard. I put a mini scoreboard on my name tag so I can give points at any time.
So at the very basic level, the scoreboard is where students can get positive points (smile/students) or negative points (sad face/teacher). Younger kids will definitely love the smiles/sad faces but upper grades might like teacher vs. students better.
These points are generally given when the whole class is doing a nice job or when the whole class needs a little motivation to improve behavior, use of WBT, etc. Once in a while POSITIVE points can be given for one student who "saved" the class from getting another sad face point to help motivate the kiddos. When students get a positive point, they get a 1 second party to say "oh yeah!" and do a fist pump or other motion you decide on. When students get a negative point, they give a mighty groan and get right back to work.
I use the scoreboard to motivate my kiddos to use our WBT gestures, to energize their Teach/Okay time, to prevent unnecessary chatter and many other instances, especially when we are in a whole group setting.
In the past I would tally up "smile day" for students to earn a classroom celebration such as a dance party, extra recess, etc. However, after attending the WBT conference, I am convinced that this scoreboard needs to be used for more immediate (but simple) rewards. I plan on giving students between 1 and 3 minutes of a fun game such as around the world or chat time at the end of the day. The possible 1-3 minutes will work perfectly because the teacher should try not to make the tallies go more than +/-3 either way. Keeping the score like this keeps students on their toes. They never feel that "winning" is out of reach or that they are "winning" by so many that they don't have to try their best.
As the year goes on you can do different things with the scoreboard such as "double points" or boys vs. girls. I've also done a double score board where half the scoreboard focuses on one classroom rule. There are many other scoreboard "levels" on wholebrainteaching.com too!
Alrighty, now for a freebie... Here is the super improver wall my grade level team will be using :) Click below to grab it for free!
Happy whole-braining :)
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