Things I wish I had known as an NQT - Seating plans!

This series of blogs is going to concern things I wish I had known when I started out as an NQT in an under-performing inner city school 15 odd years ago.

Let me be clear, there is no magic wand that will make the youngsters into model students (well, if there is I haven’t found it yet!) but there are lots of small things I could have done that would have had a cumulative effect on their learning and progress.

If you are lucky you will be working in a school which has a policy that the teacher sets a seating plan for every lesson.  The teacher is welcome to change the seating plan when they see fit but it will be easier for you if every classroom has this consistency.

If your school doesn’t insist upon this then hopefully your department will.  If your department doesn’t then I still encourage you to go for it on your own.  The students will reap the benefit.

Why have a seating plan.

A seating plan should not be used to just control behaviour.  If you try to use it to simply control behaviour you are missing out on some of the extra benefits this simple classroom strategy can bring.  Seating plans allow you to group students in a way designed to help them learn and make progress.

How do I set a seating plan up?

I have experimented over the years and have found the most effective seating plan is to sit students by current or recent attainment.  I know there are other theories behind seating plans but this is the one that works best for me. 

To one side of the room, always my right as I look at the room, I sit the most able students and the least able are on the left.  I initially thought students might complain about this but have never had any problems with students over this.

What are the benefits to doing this?

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     1. I instantly know where to aim my questioning.  Easier questions are aimed to my left so that I can build student’s self-esteem by giving them questions they find accessible and harder questions go to my right.  I rarely ask for hands up as I normally target all my questioning at a specific student.  This has the added bonus of keeping all the students focused as they are never sure when they will be asked to answer.

     2.  I try and differentiate my tasks in most lessons and it is far easier to do this if I can talk to a small group of students at the same time in one area of the classroom rather than having these students dotted around the room.

     3.   It makes group work so much easier because if I want similar ability levels to work on a problem, which I find works best, then everyone is already physically near each other.  If your group has a wide range of ability I have found that the most able tend to dominate and the least able get little out of the activity.  Also, I tend to find that the activity in a group with a wide range of ability fails to test the most able.

What about parents who complain?

Very occasionally parents do complain about seating plans having been encouraged to by their children.  In this case I give them a phone call to explain my thinking.  After the phone call I have had only a few parents, in 15 years, continue to complain that their child is sat away from their friends.  When I point out that the student is in my classroom to achieve the best they can academically and that there is plenty of time at lunch and after school for socialising they normally stop complaining.

What else?

Celebrate success.  Students are more accepting of your methods if you celebrate their progress.

The students in the type of school I work in (inner-city) respond so well to praise.  I suspect all students do but have most of my experience in this type of school.  When students are successful in my classroom I make sure the parent knows.  Minor successes get a phone call home (e.g. a good piece of work that is academically of a good standard for that student and not a piece of work that has just had lots of effort put into it.) , major successes get a letter home.  (e.g. a good performance in the end of term assessment.)

I am always surprised by the number of students who bring the letter in to show me as they and their parents are so proud of it.

Try a seating plan and let me know how it goes.