My son figured out it did not matter if you went to red if you were on green at the end of the day so his goal was just to be good at the end of the day. Then he played a game with a friend to see how often he could go to red and back to green in a day.

I am on the fence with this system. My younger child fidgets a lot so it gets him in trouble. He has lots of good friends at school as can be observed during drop off and recess. I had noticed that we had difficulty getting playdates however. I had asked the teacher to continue the light chart but keep it private while my kid adjusts to the system. Maybe it was coincidence but we are now able to get playdates easily, and the extra social interaction with other kids outside of the class seems to help him get back on green.

My kids school used it but the colors had numbers not names so it was a bit more annoymous. You might see a few reds but you did not know that it was Billy AGAIN...unless you were paying way more attention that most 5 year olds do.

They had this at my child's first elementary school and he hated it. Even though he never came home with anything but green. It caused him such anxiety and he didn't even like seeing his friends get on the bad colors (what he called it). He was so happy when we changed schools and they weren't using it at the new school. What grade do they normally stop using it?

" I felt like the K teacher last year used it pretty responsibly -- she made a big point that everyone started every day on green, and everyone got a warning before their color changed, and there were ways to get back from a yellow to a green. "

my experience too last year.

They used it in my daughter's K class last year, and now they're using something similar in 1st.

It's only the second week of school, so I don't have a sense yet of how the 1st grade teacher is using it, but I felt like the K teacher last year used it pretty responsibly -- she made a big point that everyone started every day on green, and everyone got a warning before their color changed, and there were ways to get back from a yellow to a green.

I will note that they did not use this system in the PK3/PK4 classes. I'm not a child development expert, but I can see it not being as effective/healthy for younger children. My pediatrician says kids get really rule-oriented around age 6, so I can see the stoplight approach working well at that point, but not earlier.

A lot of schools have kids who can't speak English so they use colors

It's common and seems to work without shaming any kids. They really don't care about anyone's status but their own. And if they do care, then they'd already be noticing other kids behavior anyhow.

I'm not a fan, but one of my three kids had a teacher who used it, and it was OK. I would worry about teachers who use it for older kids, but if it simplifies things while kids get settled into school, I can live with it.

Pretty much every public elem school I know uses it, in one form or another, in the early grades.

OP here - ok, this sounds about right. Back in early preschool, when the kids all misbehaved constantly because they were 3-4, it just made the kids feel badly. It didn't help keep the kids in line. The preschool generally took a not-great approach to the preschool years (it was also a daycare, and really the preschool was just a continuation of the daycare). If it's the norm in elementary I'm not going to over think it or worry about it unless DD gets freaked out by it.

Anonymous wrote:They used it in our school. It worked and was not used to shame kids. Just a reminder about how to behave in the classroom. There are so many other things to worry about......

Same here in our FCPS kindergarten. Not sure about the older grades, as my 1st grader didn't report anything on charts yesterday.

I know parenting philosophies like positive discipline frown on the charts.

Our school used it in the early grades. I didn't have a problem with it. It was helpful for me in gauging how DS (who struggled with classroom behavior) was doing -- Was it a "yellow" or a "red"day or a very rare Green day to celebrate. I think it also helped him to have a visual reminder about behavior.

They used it in our school. It worked and was not used to shame kids. Just a reminder about how to behave in the classroom. There are so many other things to worry about......

We left a preschool that was using this kind of system to shame the kids who misbehaved. We left for a host of other reasons too, but that was on my list of things I didn't like. Jump forward a couple of years and it turns out the elementary we've enrolled in uses this system. I found it very inappropriate for preschool, but maybe once the kids are a little older it can be effective? I don't know if DD's teacher is making everyone's status (green/red or what have you) visible for all. Can anyone share with me the experience they've had with this tool in the classroom and whether it was or was not a big deal?