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I always have my students sit in assigned seats. Anytime I’ve ventured out of assigned seats, I have regretted it. With assigned seats comes seating charts. One thing that’s a MUST for me is that I have the seating chart up as students come into class. Getting high school students to move seats once they’ve already settled in is near impossible. I’ve tried making seating charts several different ways over the years, but they have all had their flaws.
When I first started teaching, I had little cards with my students names on them that I put on their desks. Yeah, you can imagine how that worked out between classes in a high school. I was running around like a crazy person trying to get the next class period’s cards laid out. Dumb idea. Don't do this.
I’ve also tried making a powerpoint of my seating chart and projecting it for students to see on the board. That’s fine, but that’s also how I display student’s bell work. So, this didn’t work well either.
The software that our attendance is on has a seating chart feature. You can arrange the seats and then print it. It always turned out formatted funky and my students had a hard time reading it. Yuck.
I finally settled on printing copies of a blank seating chart and handwriting my student’s names on it. I would tape it to the board in a prominent location and my students would see it as they came in. This worked beautifully most of the time. However, sometimes I would write a student’s name twice and forget another student. Occasionally, I would spell a student’s name wrong and then feel bad later.
And then I discovered the best idea ever! A teacher-friend shared it with me, and it’s too good for me to keep it to myself!
At the beginning of the year, I print one blank seating chart for each class period. I also write all of my student’s names on Post-It page markers. I know it’s a huge pain if you have a lot of students, but it’s totally worth it.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
I put the little page marker on each student’s assigned seat and slide it into a sheet protector. Hang it on the board for students to see as they come into class. If you ever want to move seats, you just have to move the little Post-Its. BEAUTIFUL!
Have you ever used this method for creating a seating chart?
