Class

Wall Chart

Move children up and down a wall chart in several sections.

Prepare

Four sections of your wall chart.

Each section is a laminated piece of A4 paper with a different picture, reflecting some sort of scale, e.g. storm, cloud, sun, rainbow. Your children can decide the order.

Every child’s name (or photo) on its own small slip of paper (again, laminated if possible) with blue tack on the back of each name.

Technique

There are other ways to structure a similar wall chart. For example have a big chart with every child’s name written on a little paper ‘pocket’. The pocket can hold a separate piece of paper (e.g. green = great, orange = good, red = warning). You change round the pieces of paper all the time to reflect the child’s behavior and achievements that day.

Extend

All the children’s names begin in the middle (e.g. between cloud and sun).

When a child (or group of children) does something good, they rise up to sun. And then again to rainbow.

Make this into a positive system, so always try to move children up (even for small things). Start every day with statements like, ‘We’re all going to try and get to the rainbow today’. Especially find reasons to move ‘difficult’ children up the chart.

However, if a child does something bad, they move down (e.g. to the cloud), and finally thunder. You can always warn that they will move to thunder before doing so.

Any child on thunder (or perhaps below thunder, i.e. off the chart) would face a consequence. If you don’t implement this, the wall chart loses its effectiveness. Children should be falling to thunder rarely – only for repeated disruption, or something very bad (e.g. violence).

You can decide when to re-set the whole class back to the start (e.g. every day, start of every week, etc.). Re-setting shows children that they always have another chance.

You could also work towards a group reward for everyone being on the sun or above (see Pebble in the Jar).

Change the wall chart pictures according to your topic, e.g. for Transport, a police car (the bottom), a rusty bicycle, a car, a boat (maybe by a tropical island!) or an airplane.