Classroom Arrangements

I was recently asked: “How should you arrange classroom (ie-teacher’s desk) to promote community…or does it matter?”

I'm not a big believer in "one" right way to do something, but it does make a difference. For example, the standard room with desks in a row and the teacher's desk front and center sends a message that the teacher is in charge, and the students are simply recipients of information. However, I was in a classroom set up like this, and it was a community, mainly because the teacher was never at his desk; he was always in the middle of his students, who also had flexibility to rearrange the desks. That's what is more important--do students feel like they are a part of things, or separate from the teacher? In my classroom, I tend to find that clustering desks/tables works better for me so I can facilitate groups. In my grad classes, though, if I have a small group (8-12), I tend to do a large, square U so everyone is together. In that instance, clusters of tables actually breaks community rather than building it.

Keeping Your Sanity: 5 Tips for Ending the School Year

I asked my dear friend, Dr. Frank Buck to provide tips for the close of the school year.  You'll find his top 5 list below.  If you are organized, want to get more organized, or are lost in the middle of all your work, read Frank's blog, join his e-newsletter, and check out his free resources on his website.  They are all worth your time (more information at the bottom).

Your year is drawing to an end. I have heard closing the year being described as like being on a sled headed downhill. No matter what you do, the thing gets faster and faster, and you simply try to avoid the trees. When the final bell sounds, we breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now.

For those who are in education for the long haul, we know that the whole scenario will play out again exactly 12 months from now. Every year, we say we will have a better handle on things next year. Yet, when next year comes, it’s the same song, just a different verse. How can we put an end to the madness once and for all? Here are 5 strategies to put you back in control:

Plan the Day the Night Before

Sure, you have heard this advice before, and it is a great practice for any time of year. But as those last two weeks approach, how you handle each day spells the difference between order and absolute chaos. Only a few days remain between a building full of people and a building empty for three months. You have loose ends to tie up with students, fellow teachers, the bookkeeper, the school secretary, and many others in the building.

When you have a list of exactly what must be handled today, you can hit the ground running the moment you arrive at school. You check things off the list, knowing the next evening you will make a new list. Your days are focused and driven with purpose. Most importantly, things are being checked off the list faster than other things are being put on it.

Anticipate Grading Problems

How wonderful it is to have software which handles all of the grade calculations for us. The caveat exists in that old computer adage, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

When the settings are correct, the averages are correct. Allow one box to be checked incorrectly, enter one formula incorrectly, and the result is a mess. If a problem exists, you want to know early. You will have plenty of time and resources available to help you determine the exact source of the problem and the quick fix. Wait until the 11^th hour to find your final grades are wrong, and you will spend the rest of the day, and probably the day of several other people, feverishly looking for a solution.

Keep grades up-to-date throughout the grading period. I never cease to be amazed at how many teachers still maintain a paper grade book and then enter everything into the software at the last minute. I never cease to be amazed by principals who allow it.

Spot check a few final averages by hand well before the time to submit grades. Offer to be the “Guinea pig” and post grades to the main office early. Run a sample report card or two.

Nothing causes more gnashing of teeth at the end of school than grades which are not correct. The good news is that it is totally avoidable.

Clear the Decks

Even though you may be working well ahead of schedule, remember others do not. Their failure to plan often results in mountains of work being dumped on you at the last minute. (If reading that sentence causes the name of any building or central office administrator to come to mind, feel free to print this post, highlight this section, and place it in the center of the offender’s desk before his or her arrival at work.)

If you already have a full week planned for the end of school, you will be buried when the additional work hits. Do everything in your power to have papers graded and entered into the computer, inventory done, programs held, and communication handled before that last week.

If your calendar and to-do list for the last week of school look bare a week out, don’t worry. Others will fill them up for you. Having the decks cleared ahead of time will allow you to tackle the new incoming requests instead of being swamped by them.

Keep ‘Em Busy

The statement, “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop” was probably penned by a middle school teacher the last week of school. Give students a “free period” while tackling the mountain of papers to grade, and you are inviting classroom management problems. Now, more than ever, teaching from bell is bell is essential.

The best-kept secret in the school ought to be what day grades “cut off.” Not every assignment must be graded. Keep students working, engaged, and submitting their work right up to the end. They do not have to know that your grades were posted to the main office last Friday.

Plan “Next Time” Now

Who are the ones guilty of dropping the paperwork bomb on you at the last minute? What paperwork do we continue to churn out and file (even though nobody ever reads it) simply because “we have always done it that way”? What end-of-school procedures just did not work well? Now is the best time to identify the landmines and make plans so they do not appear again next year.

In the school business, we start over every year. It is both a blessing and a curse. If we fail to learn from our mistakes, they become our future. On the other hand, we can craft a plan that will allow a smooth ending to a perfect year this year and every year.  

Frank Buck served as a teacher, principal, and central office administrator during a career in education spanning almost 30 years. He credits strong skills in organization and time management with success at all levels along the way.  Dr. Buck’s books, Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders and Organization Made Easy! Tools for Today’s Teachers, capture those ideas in an easy-to-read format. Readers find they are able to implement the "nuts-and-bolts" approach immediately. Whether one's preference is to organize with paper or with a digital system, Dr. Buck's approach makes getting organized easy. Follow his blog at http://frankbuck.blogspot.com/, on Twitter @DrFrankBuck #getorganized, or at his website http://frankbuck.org/.

Reviewing for Higher Levels of Learning

I used a pizza wheel to review material students are assigned to read prior to or during class. Each student writes a fact he or she learned in one of the pizza slices. Then, working in small groups, students pass their papers to the next group member, who also writes a fact. This continues around the circle until each pizza is full. Students can discuss the material, using the pizza wheels as a prompt. Then, ask students to write an extended response to a higher level question. For struggling students, one of the stumbling blocks to application-oriented questions is ensuring knowledge of basic facts.  This provides an instant go-to guide for a reference.

An added bonus is ensuring that each student participates, rather than certain students dominating group work. Although you can measure students’ understanding in an oral discussion, asking each student to write ensures that all students are involved in the lesson and provides an opportunity for every student to respond.

Jumping to Conclusions

“Now will you tell me where we are?” asked Tock as he looked around the desolate island. “To be sure,” said Canby; “you’re on the Island of Conclusions. Make yourself at home. You’re apt to be here for some time.” “But how did we get here?” asked Milo, who was still a bit puzzled by being there at all. “You jumped, of course,” explained Canby. “That’s the way most everyone gets here. It’s really quite simple; every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It’s such an easy trip to make that I’ve been here hundreds of times.” “But this is such an unpleasant-looking place,” Milo remarked. “Yes, that’s true,” admitted Canby; “it does look much better from a distance.”  from The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster


I had a student who was a constant challenge, and I taught him for 21⁄2 years! Daniel came into my class with a reputation as a troublemaker, and in seventh grade he lived up to it. By the eighth grade, he was trying to improve, but he struggled to move beyond his past behavior patterns and others’ pre- conceived notions of him. The turning point in our student-teacher relationship came when I discovered he had a talent for drawing, and I arranged for him to do some artwork for a special project. I was amazed at the turnaround from a completely negative attitude in my class the prior year to a positive attitude. In fact, if other students tried to misbehave, he would tell them to stop and pay attention. By the end of the year, he asked to be on the school news- paper in grade nine, in part because I was the sponsor. Based on his reputation, our guidance counselor was reluctant to approve his placement, but I went to bat for him; and he was the best student editorial cartoonist I ever worked with.

The year Daniel went to high school was the year I left my public school teaching job. I returned home one day and received a call from one of his relatives. Daniel had been expelled because he had a gun at school. I remember not asking, “Why did he do that?” but saying, “Tell me what else happened, because I don’t think he would have brought a gun to school.” His aunt was surprised at my response and said I was the only person who didn’t assume his guilt. Another student brought the gun to school to shoot a third student, and Daniel took the gun away from the first student. When asked why he failed to bring this to the attention of an adult, he said he didn’t trust any of the teachers enough to go to them with the gun because they wouldn’t believe him, so he put it in his locker. When it was discovered, he was expelled.

I’m always reminded of Daniel’s story when I read my favorite children’s book, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. During their journey, Milo, Tock, and the Humbug end up jumping to the Island of Conclusions, which turns out to be a less-than-pleasant place. I jumped to conclusions about Dan- iel based on our first day of class together, and it took me two years to move past that and build a strong relationship. I regret the wasted time, because I could have made so much more progress with him if I had started our teacher-student relationship differently.


Have you ever jumped to a conclusion about a student or a situation? Did you later discover that you made an incorrect assumption?

Down Time Can Lead to Discipline Problems

Beginning teachers often say they need to deal with discipline before they can focus on instruction. They quickly discover that if their instruction is busy and fast paced, many of the discipline problems disappear. Most discipline problems occur during down time—periods of time when students are not actively engaged in instruction, such as the start or end of class, during class changes, during lunch or recess, and during transitions between activities within your class. That’s why it is so important to keep your instruction moving at a rapid pace. Don’t go so fast you lose everyone, but keep it moving.

Jason Womack taught 50-minute high school classes. Each day the first task for students was to copy the schedule off the board. He organized his instruction around a theme for the day and always listed 5 to 12 activities. Typically, he scheduled 10, five-minute activities. He wanted students to see, hear, and touch something at least twice every day. In a typical day, they would “see something (watch me or data); hear about it (listen to me lecture or use the closed-eye process [tell 4–7 min. story with eyes closed]...touch some- thing (come back from wherever they went to [in their mind] and produce
something based on what they heard; draw, write it, make a video,...or a puppet show). My goal was to give them information and let them internalize and give it back; not just force-feed info and make them regurgitate it, but to give them an opportunity to internalize and express it.”

He also ensured that his students were constantly engaged in learning. Pacing is critical, as is keeping students engaged.  How can you improve what you are already doing to increase student engagement and keep discipline problems at bay?

Do Routines Make a Difference?

I was reminded of the importance of routines last semester when one of my graduate students e-mailed me in a panic. The tenor of her class had changed dramatically when the students returned from the Christmas break. In her words, they were wild and completely out of control. As we e-mailed back and forth, I learned that only one thing had changed: Before the holiday, she used a warm-up activity to start each class. Students kept these in a notebook and turned them in at the end of the week. However, she was told by an administrator that she had to take them up each day, grade them, and return them the next day. You can imagine what happened. Along with the busyness of students entering her room, she was trying to hand back yesterday’s work while they were starting on today’s work, and chaos followed.

I suggested she start with entrance slips. Students had five minutes to write down what they learned from the prior day’s lesson and any home- work. While this was happening, she handed back the graded warm-up. Next, as they started on the new warm-up, she took up entrance slips and determined how much she needed to review before she started a new lesson.

By Friday, I received an e-mail update: “My week ended so much better than it began! Entrance and exit slips are now permanent fixtures in my class. The kids have adjusted to them well. I decided to implement the slips in all of my classes, and oh what a difference they have made. I also plan to start read alouds daily...just for 5 minutes. I will begin with something that relates to some of the problems that my students may be experiencing now. I actually felt as though I was about to jump off of a cliff on Monday.” Both she and her students responded well to returning to the routine with some minor adjustments.

Tips for Creating a Student-Centric Classroom by Heather Wolpert-Gawron

Once a week, I'm going to link to some of my favorite authors' blogs.  Heather has a great one on student-centric classrooms, which includes my perspective on student arrangement at the end.  Enjoy!

Students Not Following Directions?

I ran across this posting from a high school teacher.  She describes and provides a "test" she gives her students on following directions.  I remember taking this when I was in school....the best lessons never go out of style!

My Students Don't Know How to Ask Questions!

Part of independence for students is learning to ask their own questions.  Too often, however, we are the ones asking all the questions.  I like the meaning of this quote:  A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.  ~Author Unknown   It reminds me of something my dad told me.  He said the purpose of education was to "teach students how to figure out what to do when they don't know what to do."  Isn't that true independence?  And a part of that is teaching students how to ask their own questions.  


One way to do that is to use a simple review game.  The detailed instructions and handout grid are here.  In a nutshell, what you do is put students in a small group and give them an envelope or bag that includes the question prompts.  Each student, in turn, pulls a card and asks a questions for the group, which then answers it.  It shifts the responsibility to students, but by providing them a starting point, it also provides scaffolding.  In my experience, just asking students to make up questions was too open-ended, so this is a good bridge.  

If you teach younger students, or students with special needs, or second language learners, you can easily adapt this.  Just make big cards with who, what, when, where, how, why, and which.  After you read a story, such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, ask a student to come pick a card (put the cards upside down so they can't see what they are choosing).  Then, have each student create a question about the story using the starter word on the card.  They can turn to a partner and ask the question, or if you have a small group, they can ask the group.  

Simple, and effective.  My favorite kind of activity.  

Quit Bothering Me!

Have you ever felt like saying that to a student?  I had one student, that no matter what I did, he always came up to me with questions.  He was insecure, and needed extra reinforcement.  I believe part of our job is encouraging students, but sometimes, certain students take advantage of that.  So, here's a simple strategy to try.

Implement "Ask Three Before Me".  During small group time, or independent work time, if students have a question, they have to ask three students for help before they can ask me.  You may want to change the number, but it's important to give a concrete number, otherwise, you'll have students ask everyone else so they can delay doing their work.  By allowing them to only ask three students for help, they also need to become wiser about who they ask.  It doesn't take long for them to learn that asking their best friend doesn't always help. 

Then, if they come to me for help, it's more likely that their question is a valid one that only I can answer.  It's another way to decrease the number of "what are we supposed to do" questions that you get.  You might also have them write down who they asked so you can ensure they did ask others before you.  Just another way to save you some time and allow you to support the students who need it the most. 

My Students Don't Listen to Me!

Have you ever had students who didn't listen or pay attention to you?  When I was teaching, it was a huge problem.  I would ask my students to turn to page 22 in the book, and then I fielded 15 to 20 students asking me, "What page did you say?  Where are we supposed to be in the book?"  One day, Melissa, one of my students, stopped by my room on her way to lunch.  She commented that I looked pretty frustrated.  When I replied that I was, she said, "yeah, you were upset with us this morning."  I was tired, and wasn't thinking, so I replied, "I was.  Your class NEVER listens to me!"  She smiled and said, "That's because we know we don't have to.  You'll always repeat it if we ask."  Wow.  Out of the mouths of our students comes wisdom.  As I thought about what she said, I realized that by trying to "help" them by repeating instructions, I was actually teaching them not to listen to me.

The next day, I began a new strategy. For any directions, I wrote them on the board, stated them once, and anytime a student asked me again, I simply pointed to the board.  It took a few weeks, but they learned that they were expected to listen to me the first time.  The directions were always available on the board, so they did not have an excuse to skip whatever we were doing, but I wasn't going to explain basic information over and over again.  During the transition, I realized I had been wasting an enormous amount of time answering the same questions over and over again.  My instructional time increased about 20% with one simple change in my instruction.

What to do when someone wants to derail your group?

This is probably what I'm asked most often.  What do you do when someone just takes over, or constantly comments without allowing anyone else to talk?  My best solution is exactly what I do with students...deflect, derail, and dissolve.  First, deflect an off-topic comment or a comment that is designed to inflame the group. "That's really interesting.  Since we don't have time to discuss that fully today, would you mind just writing it down on a post-it and we can come back to that at a later time."  Or...."That's an interesting topic.  Why don't you do some research and then come back to me with that later and we'll plan a time to include it."  By the way, that one is perfect for students who want to draw you off topic--they get extra homework as a bonus!

Next, derail.  Often, the person is looking for attention.  So let's find a way to shift the attention away.  I immediately ask people to grab a partner and discuss something.  Then I can go over, and speak to the person individually.

Finally, dissolve the issue.  People who want to grab and keep attention are masters at it when you are asking the whole group a question and then asking one person to respond.  Include lots of pair-shares, small groups of three to discuss and share out, etc.  One of my favorites with a group is to allow small groups to discuss, then have the pick the person who has talked the most during the session. That person is the notetaker.  Then, they pick the person who has talked the least, and they share the group's response.  A fun way to solve the problem.

Enjoy your weekend, take some time for yourself.  I'll be in Houston Monday working with some great teachers in Pearland.  I know I'll have a great time!

Does Classroom Arrangement Matter?

From one of my workshop participants, Kate: “How should you arrange the classroom (ie-teacher’s desk) to promote community…or does it matter?”

I'm not a big believer in "one" right way to do something, but it does make a difference. For example, the standard room with desks in a row and the teacher's desk front and center sends a message that the teacher is in charge, and the students are simply recipients of information. However, I was in a classroom set up like this, and it was a community, mainly because the teacher was never at his desk; he was always in the middle of his students, who also had flexibility to rearrange the desks. That's what is more important--do students feel like they are a part of things, or separate from the teacher? In my classroom, I tend to find that clustering desks/tables works better for me so I can facilitate groups. In my grad classes, though, if I had a small group (8-12), I tended to do a large, square U so everyone is together. In that instance, clusters of tables actually breaks community rather than building it.

Promoting Community in the Classroom

-“How should you arrange classroom (ie-teacher’s desk) to promote community…or does it matter?”

I'm not a big believer in "one" right way to do something, but it does make a difference. For example, the standard room with desks in a row and the teacher's desk front and center sends a message that the teacher is in charge, and the students are simply recipients of information. However, I was in a classroom set up like this, and it was a community, mainly because the teacher was never at his desk; he was always in the middle of his students, who also had flexibility to rearrange the desks. That's what is more important--do students feel like they are a part of things, or separate from the teacher? In my classroom, I tend to find that clustering desks/tables works better for me so I can facilitate groups. In my grad classes, though, if I have a small group (8-12), I tend to do a large, square U so everyone is together. In that instance, clusters of tables actually breaks community rather than building it.