Classroom Seating Chart Grid

Boxes sized for names

Cells of 28 by 22 millimetres, grey, inside a border. Deliberately not square. A name written horizontally wants width rather than height, and a square grid throws away a third of the page.

That size takes a first name comfortably and a first name plus an initial at a squeeze.

Draw the room, not the grid

The grid is a starting point, not a floor plan. Cross out the cells that are not desks. Mark where the front is.

Marking the front is the step people skip and then regret. A chart handed to a supply teacher without it is a chart they will read backwards, and every name will be on the wrong side of the room.

What a seating plan is actually for

Three things. Only one of them is discipline.

Learning names, which for a new class of thirty is a fortnight's work and is halved by a chart. Handing over — a cover teacher with a plan can address a child by name in the first minute, which changes the whole hour. And deliberate pairing, which is the part that affects learning: who sits beside whom is one of the few classroom variables a teacher fully controls.

Pair on purpose

Front and centre for anyone with a hearing or sight difficulty, and for anyone who drifts. Not a punishment, and it should not be presented as one.

Mixed-attainment pairs help both children when the task suits explanation, and hinder both when it does not, so vary it rather than fixing it for a year. Separating a pair that talks is sometimes necessary and often less effective than moving one of them next to somebody they will listen to.

Write it in pencil and date it

Plans change in the first fortnight. Several times, usually, and the changes are the point: you are learning the class as you go, and a chart that never moved is one nobody was paying attention to.

Date each version and keep the old ones. When a parents' evening question arrives about who a child sits near, or when a pattern of behaviour needs explaining, a dated sequence of plans is a considerably better answer than a memory.

Beyond the classroom

Wedding and event tables. Exam halls, meeting rooms, any training course where somebody has a single day in which to learn twenty names.

It also holds personal data once it has names on it, so treat a completed chart accordingly and shred it rather than binning it.