Class Arrangements

I had a great couple of days with my class this week.  They got to tell me all about their field trip that I wasn’t able to go on, but they made sure I heard all about it so I could feel like I had been there.  My book club is coming along and the 3 students I am working with are making progress.  One in particular is really beginning to excel in all the tasks that I have given them.  Another one is finally beginning to see that she is capable of so much more than she thought she could accomplish.  The last one is still whining when asked to do the tasks, but she is doing them now instead of just stopping and crying.  I am so proud of how hard they are working!

 Yesterday, my cooperating teacher asked me to rearrange the students’ desks into groups of four.  I was excited that she would put so much trust in me to arrange them.   I realized that a lot goes into trying to plan the classroom and place the students into groups that will benefit the student and the class as a whole.  Do you look at what personalities get along best?  Do you try to make them work with classmates that they might not choose to work with otherwise?  Does it flow with the class dynamics?  It can be daunting and easy to over analyze the best layout.

  It took a little while for me to think about what I thought would work best for them.  She has moved them at least twice since I have been in the classroom, paying close attention to personalities and how they get along.  I tried to not look at their personalities as much and instead look at their work habits and academic levels.  We have 4 strong academic students who I used as “core” students for the groups, and then I placed students around them that were not as strong academically.  My thinking was that the “core” students could help the others by modeling their work habits.  To my surprise, after we moved the desks all around, most of the students were excited about the groupings.

 I will attest to the fact that it was not an easy task to figure the arrangement out, but it was a great task for me to try my hand at.  It was nice that, when I explained my thought process to my teacher, she said that she had not thought about grouping them in the groups that I came up with.  The best thing about arranging the class is that if something does not work out you can always try it another way.