Skills in ClassDojo: A Numbering Solution

The numbering hack that fixed my ClassDojo skill order

This is one of those small classroom hacks that saves you twenty seconds a hundred times a day. ClassDojo doesn't let you reorder the skills you award — they sort alphabetically, full stop. After my third year of scrolling past 'Working Quietly' every time I wanted to award 'Participation', I figured out a workaround. It is dumb. It works. Here it is.

Why the order matters more than you think

In a busy lesson I award maybe 30-50 points across the class. The skills I use most — Participation, Teamwork, Helping Others, On Task — should be the first thing my thumb touches. The skills I use occasionally — Cleanliness, Volunteering, whatever — should be further down. ClassDojo sorts everything alphabetically, which means 'Cleanliness' is permanently above 'Participation' on my screen even though I award Participation ten times more often. Every tap costs me an extra scroll. Multiply that by 50 awards a day and you have a real time tax.

The numbering workaround

Step 1: list out every skill you currently have. Step 2: identify the five to ten you use most often. Step 3: rename them with a numeric prefix. 'Teamwork' becomes '01 Teamwork'. 'Participation' becomes '02 Participation'. 'Helping Others' becomes '03 Helping Others'. The alphabetical sorter now respects your priority because numbers sort before letters.

If you have more than nine top skills, pad with a zero — '01' through '09' then '10' through '15'. Otherwise '10' will sort before '2' because alphabetic sort treats them as text. This bites people every time.

What I rename

My top eight, in order of use: 01 Participation, 02 Helping Others, 03 On Task, 04 Effort, 05 Teamwork, 06 Persistence, 07 Leadership, 08 Kindness. Below that, the rest of my skills sort alphabetically as before, which is fine for the long tail.

The annoying limitation

This is a workaround, not a fix. The numbers show up in the kids' app too, so they see '01 Participation' instead of 'Participation'. Most kids don't care, but a few asked. I explained once that it was so I could find the skills faster, and they accepted it. Older students think it is funny.

The bigger problem: every time ClassDojo adds a feature, the numbering hack is sitting there like a workaround scar. I keep filing feature requests asking for drag-and-drop reordering. As of this writing, still not built.

Why I eventually stopped using the hack

I moved my behaviour tracking to ClassSpark inside KiwiBee, which has drag-and-drop skill reordering as a basic feature. Tap, hold, drag. No numbering, no hacks, no maintenance. ClassSpark also supports skill grouping (group related skills under a parent label) and colour coding (instantly recognise category by colour) — both things I had been faking with the numbering trick. And because ClassSpark is connected to the skills gradebook and evidence-based assessment, the behaviour data actually feeds into the academic picture instead of living in a separate dashboard.

If you stay on ClassDojo

Use the numbering trick. It costs nothing, it works today, and it saves you real time. Just remember to pad with leading zeros if you go past nine, and accept that the kids will see the numbers. If you ever want a behaviour tool that does not require workarounds, the alternative exists.

Where this fits in KiwiBee

If you are tired of numbering hacks, KiwiBee handles this natively: drag-and-drop skill ordering in ClassSpark, the same skills feeding into the gradebook, and evidence-based assessment per skill. Try it free at app.kiwibee.io.