Today’s contributor: Yesenia Saldivar
My name is Yesenia Saldivar and I am a Math and Science Instructional Coach at Webb Middle School. Before I became an Instructional Coach I taught 7th grade Math, 8th grade Math, Algebra I, and at one point even Art. Austin, TX, has been my home for 7 years, but prior to that I was in McAllen, TX.
Coming from a school that serves a high number of EL’s requires our teachers to practice a lot of different sheltered instruction strategies. This year we are working to increase our campus-wide strategies to better help our students. One of our focuses is on randomization. While we all know how to get some popsicle sticks and write your students’ names on them to help with randomization, we wanted to try using what all our students nowadays are familiar with: technology.
One of the apps that helps us use technology and hit our target of randomization is ClassDojo. This app is definitely one that helps with many things. Some teachers use it as a classroom management app, some use it to reward students, others use it as an SEL tool by playing the soothing music while their students work, but for us we love to use it as a way to randomize!
As a student, you sometimes feel like the teacher is just picking on you because you know the answers or sometimes because you don’t. I know when I was a student that’s how I felt. With the help of ClassDojo you can show your students that it really is random. Although ClassDojo can be used in many platforms, my teachers love that it can be used on their cell phone. Teachers can simply load up their class period roster, place the phone under the overhead projector, hit the random button on the bottom of the screen and the app will choose a student for you. This way your students can see that the app is choosing, not you.
You can find more information about ClassDojo by going directly to their website and signing up for a free account.
Ms. Martinez-Benitez loves to use ClassDojo with her students!
Connect. Design. Learn 
I love this! I only work in small groups of no larger than 6-7 students. I am definitely going to share this with my campus. Those teachers with larger classroom sizes can definitely put this to good use.
Great, I’m glad others will benefit from this as well!
Great, I’m glad that others will get some us out of this!