Science Education Idea Exchange

One of the best things about being a substitute teacher is seeing how others organize their classroom. In October, I covered for a teacher and love how she handles seating charts! She has a binder with tabs for each class period. Directly underneath is a layout of the tables in her room. She has the names of the students written on tiny sticky notes. This is great because it's easy to:  Make quick changes to a seating chart when you inevitably put two students together that do not promote a good learning community. Arrange students when it's time for a new seating chart. No typing in names or moving it around on a computer before printing it off. It looks much crisper than a handwritten seating chart, too. Photo by Christina Victoria Craft on Unsplash

Kagan seating is something I was introduced to when I taught in Nebraska. I loved the idea because the idea of intentionally pairing and seating students just makes sense! (For more information, check out this bloggers post !) I used a spreadsheet to sort my students for Kagan seating. First, I would use their last final grade percentage. Second, MAP testing for reading, since my school used MAP testing for benchmarks. Then, I would have the form sorted by grade first and reading second. From that, I could divide the class into quarts for high, high medium, low medium, and low. My strongest students were in the back of the classroom while the ones who struggled the most in science were closest to the front. (This works best to orient students based on how you use the classroom and where you spend most of your time.) How do you do your seating charts?