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Alli Coulter is a veteran fourth-grade teacher at Chapelwood. This year, she is teaching fourth grade Wayne at Home. Alli is known for her ability to create a classroom culture where students could easily build relationships and trust with peers and teachers. This year Alli has taken steps to intentionally build in opportunities for her Wayne at Home students to get to know one another, interact, and grow a positive classroom community.
Morning Meeting
Like other Wayne at Home classes, Alli’s class starts each day with a morning meeting. To begin the day, students are given a morning message with a thought-provoking idea or question. Students share their thoughts and reply to classmates in the chat while Alli is taking attendance. Alli wraps up the morning message by asking certain students follow up questions and encouraging students to unmute and make connections.
Alli also includes shoutouts during her morning meeting by including student names on her welcome slide and announcing their latest accomplishments. Some ways students can earn a shoutout are completing classwork and earning a certificate in Dreambox.
Digital Rewards
Alli has found Class Dojo to be an efficient way to promote positive behavior among her students. In previous years she has used both positive and negative points for each student. This year, though, she has decided to focus on awarding students positive points for behaviors like completing work, participating in live lessons, earning a shoutout, and continually arriving to class on time. As students accumulate points, they earn digital rewards.
When students earn a reward that involves sharing with the class (would you rather question, sharing a joke, video to meet my family, etc.) students send their submissions to Alli for approval. Then she schedules a time for the student to share during a morning meeting. She says, “My students seem more motivated when they can spend a little time telling us about themselves. It helps us feel connected to one another.”