Job Discussion Forums

[wonderingjoesmith]

It seems that students in my classrooms have been seated next to each other for reasons beyond my understanding. Some students that cannot see well get to be in the back and some that are better are put around ones that are worse. Further more, I am no longer allowed to move tables/seats into groups or a horse shoe which I used last year. The practices affect my students’ progress in varieties of ways and carrying out my objectives is becoming very difficult for students at greatly different levels and capabilities.

Classroom management and students’ progress, in my view, greatly depend on how or where they sit and/or who they sit around. Teachers, based on their goals and/or knowledge of learners’ characters, may assist well in all of their students progress, although if ten bad individuals are matched with ten good ones, there will probably be a lot more teachers in the classroom than expected.

Do you have such issues? If so, how do you deal with them?

[A593186]

Ability to learn depends upon physical location in the classroom? Sounds like a bigger, more personal issue to me. Sure, seating, pairing can assist in learning, but if you're unable to manage a group of students and unable to teach them based on the seat number, there is something more evil going on.

Do what you want, not what other people tell you to do.

[Bud Powell]

If this is college or uni, you'll have groups of kids who know each other from their home towns. They'll want to stay together. Allow them to stay together. If it's a boarding type school and they're young, it's especially important that you let them stay together because they're already freaked out by being away from home. Ditto for college freshmen.

Consider moving them from their self-chosen spots only if it will stop excessive talking and clowning around. Even then, be careful. Everything may seem all peacefu and harmonious, but there are cliques and petty hates among them.

And YES, location within the room DOES affect some students, and it DOES affect the learning process. Some kids have hearing problems or difficulty with the echo resulting from half-filled large class rooms and difficulty with acoustically dead rooms resulting from overcrowding. Some kids need glasses but won't tell you, but they stay in the back because they're shy.

Some kids prefer NOT to sit front and/or center. It makes them uncomfortable. You really don't need a seating chart. Just pass around a form with their names and student ID written on it and ask each one to sign in. That'll save you twenty minutes of roll call. Do a head count and Place the burden on the monitor to check who's there and who isn't there.
Use your roll book to decide which students to call upon. Eventually, the students whose names you MUST know will become known to you.

This is how I handle Uni and college class seating in China: I make an announcement several times during the first two weeks that i will accommodate students who can't hear well or see the board. Then I talk to the class monitor and ask him/her if she's aware of any problems among students. If a problem exists, I tell the monitor to relay the message to the appropriate student that the student may move to any place in the room AND bring a friend with him. I make it clear that moving is not mandatory. Usually, if there's a problem, the kid with the problem eventually moves. I ask the monitor to facilitate the move by asking him/her to explain to the others what's going on.

Re: moving desks and tables. It doesn't matter what country you teach in. Someone will b*tch about seeing the tables moved or changed. If the tables, desks and chairs aren't nailed to the floor (which is the norm wherever I've taught) just be sure to move them back to where they were where you found them at the end of the class. Unless a department head tells you NOT to move furniture, move the furniture to suit your style. You'll have really @nal Chinese teachers go nuts if anything is out of normal order, even if they never use the room, even if you're the only teacher using the room . If you move their cheese, they can't handle it.

My attitude? TS, Eliot.

I'm a foreign teacher, and I have been hired to teach the way in which I have been trained and in the way which works best for me and for my students.

[davelister]

http://archive.org/stream/Learning-Teaching/Learning-Teaching-by-James-Scrivener#page/n87/mode/2up

Learning Teaching by James Scrivener pages 87-89 are about seating.

[Non Sequitur]

You can move the seating in your classroom??

[davelister]

Yes, I've been able to. Getting students to sit in pairs, groups of 3,4,5 or 6, getting a circle of us all for discussions etc, having the chairs away to the sides to allow for mix n mingle / cocktail party-type activities, and other possibilities, including a game where there are two chairs in the middle. Some classrooms don't have the space to allow for this. Language training schools are more likely to have the space/lower numbers of students in the class for this than universities.

[teachingld2004]

The desks in my room are bolted to the floor. I have either 43 or 44 students at one time.

it is quite hard to put them ito groups, but I can. (sort of). 2 in the front and 2 behind them. The ones in the front turn around.

They can take the stools and find an area in the room and sit in a group.

They can stand.

Desks bolted to the floor present a host of problems, one being that the ones in the bak of the room get lost.

Sitting in a circle I love at times because everyone usually can see everyone else.

Not much you can do when the desks are bolted to the floor.

[wonderingjoesmith]

[choudoufu]

at the risk of being confused with helena-A39874639874.....

just tell 'em to move. you're the teacher; you're in charge.
surely you can tell them where to sit.


if you're having trouble, try this:

http://www.myinstants.com/instant/respect-my-authoritah/

[Bud Powell]

In truth, I've had very little need to rearrange entire classes. I just make it clear that while the picnic tables at which they sit may be bolted to the floor, their butts aren't bolted to the tables. I tell them that if anyone needs to move, just pick up and move.

I think my situation is probably different from that of most of the active participants in that I teach mostly university level, and the students eventually appreciate the freedoms that I give them.

I'm not sure that my approach would work in middle school level and below in China or in the U.S..

[wonderingjoesmith]

Dear Bud Powell,

I am pleased to see this topic has caught your attention.

To my knowledge, where students sit in many American high schools and perhaps in all the country’s tertiary institutions is more often up to them; however, my experience and what I hear around suggest that where learners assume their positions in the Chinese high school system doesn’t usually depend on them. Although assigning seats to the teenagers provides educators with a degree of classroom management, the reasons behind placing them in certain spots give a different meaning to what education is about in this country.

I look forward to read more about your experiences either on mainland China or in the USA.

Sincerely yours,
Joe

[Non Sequitur]

'their butts aren't bolted to the tables'

Well put.
In two classes I've noticed a student deliberately move to a seat where he (both boys) can give me his undivided attention.
I'm a mad prize awarder and both these students received 'Best Attitude' awards.