How should I arrange the seats in my classroom? How do you arrange them in yours?

Question

I am going to student-teach starting in August and I will have full control over the classroom. I am going for a "test drive" next week and I would like some advice, please!

Thanks :-)

Answer 1

What grade are you teaching? This does make a difference. I teach a Math AIS(intervention service)class and I have a huge table that the students sit around. I know many teachers who arrange the desks the same way to encourage cooperative learning and discussion. This could work at all grade levels, if the rules are established right from the beginning!

Answer 2

What age?

Work groups for younger ones. More face-forward for older ones. Student to student communication is important for maximizing learning.

Answer 3

alphabetical order or just let the kids sit anywhere and check if they talk a lot. If they talk put them at the front of the class.

Answer 4

If you can, get "the first day of school" by Harry Wong, and "Positive Classroom Discipline" by Dr. Fred Jones.  I might have the titles wrong, but I have the authors right.

Spread the seats out.  Kids love to crowd up together so that they can talk, but it makes getting around the classroom troublesome.  Arrange the seats so you can move between them in any direction.   If possible, number the seats, and assign the seats to the students by number, in alphabetical order.  

Ask them to put the class period and chair number on their papers, and the papers will be numbered in alphabetical order. (First period would be 1.  Chairs 1 through 9 for first period would be 101, 102, 103, 104 and so on.)  It takes much less time to put papers in numerical order than in alphabetical, but having them in order makes recording grades much quicker.  You can also tell at a glance that 107, for example, is missing, and get to the kid with the missing work right then, so he is held more accountable.  If he knows you know the work isn't in, he's more likely to get it in in the future.

When you place the chairs, you want to be able to get any where in the classroom in as few steps as possible.  You also want to be able to walk between desks to look to see that students on either side are on task.  If you can not get to a student, that student will be more likely to slack off.  Proximity doesn't guarantee compliance, but it is useful to encourage it.  Ignoring a kid doesn't guarantee disobedience, but it gives the kid a sense of freedom to disobey.

Good luck.  Teaching is a rewarding career.

Answer 5

From a student with straight As, do not let everyone choose their seat.  People talk too much and it gets distracting.  Also do not put them in alphabetical order.  Too many teachers do that and kids get bored of sitting next to the same people.  The two best ways to do it are...

1. This way only works if you are going to be there a while.  Asign the seats to start, but tell the kids that after a certain period of time, you will do the following.  Let the kid with the best grade choose where they want to sit first.  Then the second, then the third, and so on.  However, the seats of the kids with the ten or so lowest grades are chosen by you.  This is an incentive to get good grades.

2. Just asign the seats to the kids and make them live with it.  As long as you change the seats every 4 or 5 weeks, this will turn out fine.

Answer 6

If you are student teaching, you may not have a choice.  My strategy was to let them sit where they wanted and if there were problems I assigned seats.  This worked well and it was fourth grade.  The students were usually pretty honest - "Miss, this isn't working for me!" or "I hate sitting with girls..." and so on.  Good luck - student teaching is a trip!

Answer 7

Definitely get Harry Wong's "First Days of School" It is an excellent resource for planning your procedures, etc.

Desk arrangements vary depending on subject and room size.  As an art teacher, I have one of the largest rooms in our school. My students sit at table groups (2 8ft tables pushed together for 4-6 students).  Other teachers have much smaller classrooms with desks.  Many in the small classrooms arrange the desks in a "square u" - three sections of seats against 3 walls of the classroom with a space in the middle.  This works very well and even makes the room seem bigger.

Whatever you choose, make sure you can easily walk around the room.  Remember- the student farthest from you is most likely to struggle. So be close to them all! Also, you have to make sure they aren't doing inappropriate things (passing notes, text message, taking pictures with their phones, and my recent favorite - drinking alcohol from waterbottles!).

Good luck with your student teaching!

Answer 8

in my english class, we have a U-shape. like the board is in the front and then there is a U-shape with the desks. I like it that way better, personally, im a student and I feel its not so rigid like a normal class (straight rows). for the first week or two have the students sit alphabetically, and then tell them they will be able to sit anywhere if they respect, and do the work.