My challenging kids are starting to work together to try to dismantle my teaching. They have seen that they are not getting my usual response to their disruptions (i.e. timeouts or removal to another classroom), so they are working very hard to get something out of me. I never use the scoreboard in response to what they are doing, as this is what they are after. I understand from discussions with others that there are terms for what is happening in my classroom. I am engaging in planned ignoring, and the increase in misbehavior is called an extinction burst. An extinction burst is to be expected in this situation. If I am consistent in not responding to their behavior, it will peak and then start to fade. On the other hand, if I now start to respond to their behavior, I will have created a monster: their new level of misbehavior will have been escalated to the level I am currently experiencing.

In spite of what sounds like a nightmare scenario, the disruptive students for the first time this year, are not dominating my attention. The others are still focused on mirroring me, teaching their partners, and trying to learn. Ironically, even the few disruptive students are repeatedly pulled back into the class in spite of themselves. I think the WBT techniques create an atmosphere from which it is hard to escape. It makes it almost impossible not to participate at least some of the time.

I admire your persistence ... and I've never heard of an extinction burst. I'd love for you to hang in another week or so, to see if it works. Nonetheless, there are quite a few things you can do with the Scoreboard to address a few challenging students ... before you go to Practice Cards. And, in general, we don't suggest usng Practice Cards until you've superbly trained your kids for several months using the Scoreboard.

Okay, here are some suggestions.
1. Be sure you have the kids rehearsing the rules at the start of the day, after each recess and after lunch. Make it fun ... use different voices and have student leaders. You might have one of your CKs (challenging kids), after quite a few others have had a turn, be a rule leader.
2. When the rules are mastered perfectly, then use the rule cue technique described in our free download, "Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids" ... rehearse the correct and incorrect way to use the cue, at least once a day.
3. Once in awhile, try one of the Scoreboard variations described in the "levels" menu above ... one of your great strengths should be unpredictibility ... I especially suggest using teams of Girls vs. Boys as a special treat for one period ... and for a small reward, say, who gets to line up first for one recess ... if they love this game, and usually they willl ... DON'T GO BACK TO IT ... make them earn it with excellent behavior ... whenever they are three points ahead on the regular Scoreboard for five minutes, give them a star ... when they have 5 stars, they get to play Boys against the Girls.
4. After a pattern of disruptive behavior, say "Oh, gosh. We've got a few kids over here who aren't helping the class get Smilies ... give me a Mighty Groan" and then make a Frownie mark. When you do this, DO NOT LOOK AT THE CHALLENGING KIDS ... point toward them, but look the other way. If you look at them, you are inviviting more challenging behavior.
5. As soon as you see a little appropriate behavior from even one of your challenging kids say, "Wow! Mark is doing great. He just earned a Smilie for everyone!" We can use the Scoreboard to reward individual positive behavior but never to punish individual negative behavior.
6. Try "Teacher vs. Students" described in the 5th-12th Scoreboard game in the "1st Steps" menu above.
-- Finally ... here are seven (!) brand new variations on the Scoreboard ... any change you make, stick with it either briefly, before going back to the original Scoreboard ... or stick with it as long as possible ... BUT DON'T MAKE ONE CHANGE AFTER ANOTHER! As we say, it's a long year.

The Art of the Scoreboard

A central problem in education is that kids can become bored, sometimes with surprising speed, with any learning activity. What mesmerized them in September puts them to sleep in November. The technical name for this is habituation. When students become habituated to a learning experience, they respond with less and less vigor to what had previously been highly stimulating. Thus, we need lots of ways to introduce novelty, motivating novelty, into our instruction. The Scoreboard is a central feature of Whole Brain Teaching classrooms. Experienced WBT educators use the Scoreboard as a continuous motivator for on task, bell to bell, maximally engaged learning. Here are seven variations on the Scoreboard, each one having, in itself, multiple variations!

1. Vertical Morphin’ Scoreboard
After using your Scoreboard for awhile, extend the center line upward and then draw another line crosswise on top of this center line. You now have what looks like one Scoreboard on top of the other; the Scoreboard has morphed into a Higher Power. Label the top Scoreboard with another set of Smiies and Frownies, or whatever you are currently using. Also add a note that this Higher Board is the next grade higher for your students. Thus, if your students are 4th graders, the higher board is a 5th grade standard. Point out that energy that might have scored a Smilie in 4th grade, could earn a Frownie in 5th grade. Use the higher board rather ruthlessly for a few quick Frownies when students are a hair slow or a hair less focused than you wish. As the day, or week proceeds, add categories to the higher board: speed, eye focus (every eye on you when you’re talking), full turn (students fully turned in their seats when teaching their neighbors), gestures (emphatic gestures used when teaching their neighbors). In the morning add one category and mark Higher Smilies or Higher Frownies in that category; then add a second category later in the morning and mark both categories and so forth through the day. So that in the last hour, when student energy is normally the lowest, they have the most higher categories used as motivators.
Obviously, you could morph the Scoreboard to an even higher level, call it College. So then, you’d have a triple Scoreboard, one on top of the other. This higher Scoreboard is a “challenge” … “let’s see if you can hang at the college level…” In general, when you get them at this highest level, make sure they win so that they feel wonderful about their maximum energy.

2. Horizontal Morphin’ Scoreboard

Extend the normal Scoreboard horizontally so that you have two Frownie Categories and two Smilie categories. Thus, you have four columns. The leftmost column has two Frownies, the next column has one Frownie, the next column has one Smilie and the next column has two Smilies. Now, when the students are “really slow” … or whatever, make a mark in the Double Frownie column … that counts as two Frownies! Ditto for the Double Smilie column. Obviously, the overall score doesn’t need to change from the normal Scoreboard, but kids will really be sizzling when they are zonked with Double Frownies or Smilies.
For madcap energy, combine the Horizontal Morphin’ Scoreboard with the Vertical Morphin’ Scoreboard … so kids are at the College Level and can add double or even triple ! Smiles or Frownies!!! Don’t overdo this … at this highest or most extreme level, kids should only be working a few minutes at a time, usually when their energy is the lowest in the last minutes of the day.

3. Team Scoreboard

Draw a horizontal line across the middle of the Scoreboard. This will give you a higher and lower Frownie and a higher and lower Smilie. You are now ready to play Teams. Two excellent teams are boys against the girls, or left half of class against right, or back half against front half … or even nominate two captains on opposite sides of the room and give the kids a count of 15 to divide equally, half sitting with one captain and the other half with the other. If you play one team against the other, then the winning team gets the prize … one extra credit point or lining up before the other team, or whatever. Keep the reward small so that later in the year it can be doubled or tripled. You can also play cooperatively with teams scoring points for the class as a whole. When both teams have, say, a total of three more positives then negatives, give the teams a prize, playing Mind Soccer for two minutes, for example.

4. Scoreboardless Scoreboard

Draw a circle on the upper right of the whiteboard (your students’ right). Label this circle with the prize, say Music Time. Then, draw a “road” from the upper left of the whiteboard all the way to the Prize. Now, as the class proceeds, draw a line down the middle of the road, this marks their progress toward the prize. “Oh, you’re getting closer … oh, you moved even further, oh, you zoomed ahead!” Of course, they can also go off the road … even go back toward their starting point! The line eventually looks very zig-zaggy, shooting forward, veering off the road, looping back. Students cheer forward motion and groan at backward motion. When they complain, of couse that means they are going even further backward, further away from the Prize.
For even more fun, put several question marks along the road. These are Mystery Spots. When the line gets to a Mystery Spot, then you stop for some kind of special exercise. For example, students summarize everything from a lesson on a previous day, or make diagrams illustrating everything you’ve said thus far, or use a pencil as a prop to describe actions in a story etc. Mystery Spots should be relatively short breaks in the overall progress of the day.

5. Leaderboard

Have the class nominate five or so classroom leaders. Make one column on the whiteboard and label it, Leaders Rule. Now, when the Leaders are working hard, being great leaders, totally focused, highly energetic in teaching their neighbors, etc. make a positive mark in the Leaders Rule column. When the marks reach 10, the class earns the Prize. NOTE: Don’t make any negative marks in the Leaders Rule column … you don’t want to turn the classroom leaders against you!
If you wish, you can, over several days, add columns to the Leaders Rule chart. One column could be speed, another eye focus, another, gestures, another great questions, etc. Add the columns slowly. Then make a mark in the appropriate column when you see one or more leaders demonstrating that leadership virtue.
For even more tension and engagement, add the leaders’ names to the Leaders Rule column. Now, you can reward individual leaders for individual achievement (using or not using the columns for specific kinds of engagement).

6. Gridboard

Under the Frownies write “Slow” and under the Smilies write “Fast.” Now you are marking for one individual class virtue, speed. As the day, or week, unfolds add other virtues: sleepy/energetic gestures, partial turn/full turn, little focus/max focus.

7. Virtueboard

Only on the Smiley side,add special Smiley categories like Great Question, or Excellent Leadership or Politeness or Generous Sharing, Unselfishness, Kindness, Honesty or even Excuselessness (when a kid is accountable for his/her actions). Don’t make any equivalent Frownie category for these! It would be awful to have a kid ask a question and you say, “Oh, awful question! Here’s a Frownie!” Because we want our kids to be virtuous, to develop strong, moral characters, you might have the Virtueboard be entirely separate, on the other side of the whiteboard from the regular Scoreboard. The Virtueboard would be an excellent way of monitoring outside of class behavior (lunch, playground, lines). You might even have Virtue Captains whose job it would be to occasionally make a mark on the Smilie side of the Virtueboard for virtuous actions they observed.

Chris,
I thought I was all ready to move to the practice cards until I read this post.

I got the manuals out, studied and practiced at home for practice cards. This though has made me feel that my class is not at 100% working for/and internalizing the smilies and frownies. So my guess is we need to stay with the score board longer (we have used it since Sept. with only one change two months into school they rearranged my students).

Help,
Annette

Annette ... if you've used the Scoreboard consistently for several months, as I think you have, then you can now start the Practice Cards! But remember, use the Scoreboard as well as the cards.

Suggestions 4 and 5 above worked very well today. Much calmer students. Thanks for the suggestions.

Cutting edge WBT!!!! I love it. I can't wait to use it tomorrow. I like the virtuous scoreboard the best...well I also like the road to reward/success.....

I've divided my Scoreboard into three sections so each period of science can see how the other class scored. I used to just erase and start over. But I need something to energize my students before lunch and then for the last period of the day. It's not enough to just beat the teacher, but now they can try and earn more points than the other science classes!!! Their reward of course is Mind Soccer and they love to remind me of that reward. I always start the class off with a review so I use Mind Soccer as my review. I am in teacher heaven. I wish I could have known all this last year when I was in teacher hell!!!!

You know what is crazy? The last period I have is the last 80 minutes of school. In the past that is usually when I have had the most challenge for engaging my students, but almost everyday it's my last period who are the most energized and excited to be in class. They participate and act like kids instead of gangsters or divas. I am in teacher heaven and I actually enjoy teaching because they are enjoying learning. Thanks for this community!!

I used the Vertical Morphin’ Scoreboard. I really liked this variation because it allowed me to up the expectations of some behavior that I've had to rehearse a lot (e.g. - a loud, crips Class/Yes, total participation with Hands and Eyes). The effect was I got more enthusiastic participation with less hype/energy spent on my part. Thanks for the variations, Chris.

End of the day energy - I need to work out how to pump up the energy of the students I have all day long. It's a good goal to make the end of the day the most exciting. I need to work on this.

JBASS,
Think of how you feel at the end of the day and what would make you smile. I tend to be more goofy (in a good way) at the end of the day because I know it's been a long day for us all. I've added double points for enthusiasm and respect to the Scoreboard this week. They came up with "OHHHHH yeah-yeah" when they get a double point, and they love saying it!!!

My first grade students totally embraced the Virtue Board. It was wonderful to see them strive for leadership, kindness, helpfulness, and responsibility. My students would nominate each other, saying, "I think __________ showed _________ because ...". It even carried over into our writing, as I had slips of paper in the writing center, and the students could write out how a classmate was demonstrating virtuous qualities. During our circle time, we read these aloud, and wow, did they ever feel great!
So, this week I tried the Gridboard, focusing in on fast and slow. The cool thing is, my students are continuing to emphasize virtue, even though it is not our scoreboard this week. I chuckled as one of my young ladies really needed to use the restroom, but the only stall open had a door that wouldn't latch. From inside the stall, I overheard her say, "Boy, I sure wish Mrs. Weigel was giving us points for virtue. I would tell her that ________ showed kindness because she held the door for me when I really needed to go!" When she came out, she announced, " ___________ should get a "virtue" cheer because she showed kindness to me when I really needed it!"
WOW! Virtue being shown, and recognized, without any reward! Teacher Heaven!!!