Arranging space in the classroom

The ways we organise the desks, chairs, tables, floor areas, chalkboards, and other objects in the classroom will depend on two factors:

- the teaching and learning styles we wish to support

- the classroom itself and the resources within it

Organising "furniture resources"

If your classroom has desks with chairs attached to them, this limits your ability to seat the whole class in a circle. If your classroom has neither desks nor chairs, you can easily arrange learners in any pattern, including a circle, but they may find it difficult without a flat surface to practice writing or to draw.

Whatever the possibilities that are open to you, you are not constrained to keep one classroom organisation throughout the year.

For whole-class activities, such as discussions or recitation, you can arrange children in a large circle, or you can place their desks in rows facing one direction.

What kinds of behaviours are reinforced when children sit in rows facing the same direction?

In this arrangement, children are all asked to put their focus on a single point (usually the teacher). There questions, answers, and opinions are all naturally directed to the front of the room (and to the teacher). And they are discouraged from communicating with other students, whose backs are visible in front of them and whose faces are behind them.

What kinds of classroom learning activities are best suited by this arrangement?

What behaviours are reinforced when children sit in a large circle, or when their desks are placed around the walls of the room?

They are invited to look at each other (and at the teacher, if she's in the circle). When they talk, they can see their entire audience; when they listen, they can see who's speaking. Can the learners still see the teacher and the blackboard for whole-class instruction?

For small-group and learning-pair activities, you can create clusters of desks in various areas, or you can arrange groups' desks around the perimeter of the classroom.

When are the advantages of arranging desks around the perimeter for group work?

Groups are able to meet effectively, and the time and organisation required to shift between that organisation and one appropriate for whole-class activities is minimal.

However, groups are close together, so they even the noise levels of focused co-operative learning may prove disturbing, and there is a great deal of unused space in the centre of the classroom. In addition, access to other children or to resources around the room may be impeded.

What are the advantages of cluster-group arrangements?

Groups can work with freedom of movement and with access to all of the classroom resources.

How could this arrangement accommodate whole-class instruction?

Depending on the size of the desks or tables in the room, you can begin whole-class instruction (say, reading to the class or introducing a geography unit on rivers) by asking groups to shift to positions from which they can see you. In practice, this may mean that children sit at three sides of the table or the desk cluster.

By relying on learners to shift their seats as necessary, you can teach from any point in the room, freeing you to make direct reference to maps, charts, the blackboard, and other visual resources.

This arrangement also supports Centres of learning in the classroom.

To review the kinds of activities supported by learning centres, visit Teaching styles for active learning.