Flexible Seating

We did it!  Our classroom is 100% free from assigned seating.  I've wanted to do this for years, but I just didn't know how to manage it in an intermediate classroom. I am so thankful to Kayla Delzer for working out the kinks in her second grade classroom and letting us observe for the morning. We have standing tables, low tables, desks on wheels, desks in a semi circle.  We have ball chairs, wiggle chairs, barber shop chairs, cubes, wobble cushions, and pillows.

     
     

Classroom Jobs

So I think we finally have a system figured out for classroom jobs. A job is anything that needs to be done so that our classroom can run more smoothly.  Anyone can do a job- there is no applying or a teacher-boss mandating that the job get done.  As I set up the classroom this fall, I thought about things that I do each day that could be done by kids rather than me.  Jobs such as returning library books, organizing the library, sharpening pencils, tweeting happentings etc came to mind.  The funny thing is as soon as I started asking myself if what I was doing could be done by a student, jobs were popping up daily.  Weekly, we were making a chart and adding kids names beside the job.  Anybody can add their name to the job so we may have 3 people wanting to return library books.  That's fine. The three of them then figure out a system for taking care of that job for the month.  At the end of the month, we revisit how things are working out. Sometimes kids resign because the job isn't a good fit.  Many times kids switch jobs and that's great!