Seating arrangement

Aha! I liked the seating arrangement in the 5th grade class where I worked this morning. With nearly 30 students, classrooms are crowded. I have seen many desk arrangements – some better than others, and some that are just claustrophobic. THIS teacher put all of the desks around the perimeter of the room facing the walls (or cupboards in some areas) and almost all of the seats were giant blue or green balls (her desk seat was a ball on a platform with coasters – quite comfortable as long as I was careful how I sat down). Then, in the center of the room she had a rug, and a variety of “temporary” seating possibilities that the kids could choose, such as: a table with about 8 giant balls around it, a pile of beach-type lounge chairs, a couple of pedaling thingies, a few red wooden chairs, and some stacking cubes.   During work time, the kids are free to sit wherever and however they want as long as they are being productive.

The genius here is that they keep their stuff in their desks but they aren’t tied to them the whole day. Some kids like being at their desks facing the bulletin board – it’s more private. Others like the community of the table or just sitting on the floor with a clipboard. It was ROOMY and I’m certain that if she needs anything out of the cabinets that were blocked, it wouldn’t be difficult to slide a couple desks out of the way and get what she needed.

Due to re-structuring, she has to move to another room for next year. Likely she’ll set it up the same way, but too bad for her to have to re-do everything.