August 24, 2012

The ONLY way to make a Seating Chart REVEALED

Take the ART out of your SEATING chART! Throw away all the drawings and graphic art seating charts. All you need for this seating chart is your attendance book and a sharpie!

To be honest, I hate spending my time on elaborate classroom management systems. But efficient classroom management is a must! Especially assigned seats in my opinion! So here's the easiest way to assign and remember students seats!

1. Write numbers on the edge of the tables at each seat with a Sharpie . . .  shhhh don't tell anyone I wrote on the table. 
(Warning: Do NOT try writing numbers on chairs, because in the art room chairs get moved daily!) 
2. Seat students in desired arrangement the first day. 
3. While taking attendance ask students to say "Here" and their number. For example, Teacher says "Juan?" Juan says, "Here! 12." You write 12 by Juan's name. 
(TIP: I have a student demonstrate how to do this so it goes very quickly.)
4. In your attendance book write their seat number IN PENCIL. This is important as you will be changing seats inevitably. 

Dirty but it gets the job done!

This is how I label the seats!
Smack on the table with a SHARPIE. 

VOILA! No extra papers, no fuss, and a perfectly ordered seating plan!

With 5 + classes a day this works like a charm. 

So what do you think? Would you use this or do you even have a faster way!?


NEXT POST: Open House TIME and how to prepare for a meaningful open house in the Art Room. 

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Erica!

Well, what a neat system you've come up with! If I didn't have new tables with extremely dark finished edges, I might have been able to try this. But, I spent some time noodling around with Microsoft Word and designed some pretty sweet seating charts for two of my schools and the third school is so small, I just drew quick table charts for my 4 classes there. I really like your idea though!

:)Pat

GRich said...

This is an amazing idea!!! So simple and thoughtful! Thank-you for the tip! I'll be writing numbers onto the table Monday.

GRich

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip. I am going to give this method a try. My max. number of students is 26 so letters would be ideal. (I numbered my chairs. It may confuse my younger students!)

Anonymous said...

I used www.socialtables.com for my classroom seating chart and I didn't have to ruin the tables ;) You should try it out, they have a special so it's free for teachers right now!