The general idea is that students' move their clip up and/or down the chart depending on their behavior choices. Each day, students start fresh at "Ready to Learn," which is in the middle of the chart.
For my class, I'm not a "heavy clipper." I don't do a ton of clip ups or clip downs. Please remember that being on "ready to learn" all day is just fine with me. I don't catch all students deserving of a clip up. And a student who clips down once... um, it's not the end of the world.
If your child clips all the way down (three clip downs) in a day, I'll contact you, or if your child is consistently clipping down each day, I'll contact you. And if your child reaches the top of the clip chart, I'll contact you for that too.
The class and I created four rules to guide our clip chart:
We took some time to discuss what each of those phrases mean, and they are beginning to become part of our daily language. Do you notice anything that seems to be missing?
I've intentionally left out rules that are focused on how we treat each other. I prefer to keep those issues separate. So, for example, I won't clip up a student for helping pick up someone's spilled pencil pouch. And I won't clip down a student for being rude to someone in line.
I'm not saying that these things are not important. I'm actually trying to say that they are MORE important than what can be captured with a clothespin. I realize that other classrooms at Cherry Tree may not exactly do their clip charts this way, but please know that if there are issues with how your child is treating others, I'll be in touch with you.
I've already seen SO MANY examples of kindness, and patience, and respect, and selflessness, and leadership popping up in our little classroom community here, without being motivated by a clip chart, that I think we may just be on the right track.
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