Spatial arrangements unique to grade levels or subjects
Some room arrangements depend significantly on the grade level or subject area of the class. If you teach in
elementary school, for example, you may need to think about where students can keep their daily belongings, such
as coats and lunches. In some schools, these can be kept outside the classroom—but not in all schools. Some
subjects and grade levels, furthermore, lend themselves especially well to small group interaction, in which case you
might prefer not to seat students in rows, but around several small-group tables or work areas. The latter
arrangement is sometimes preferred by elementary teachers, but is also useful in high schools wherever students
need lots of counter space, as in some shops courses, or wherever they need to interact, as in English as a Second
Language courses (McCafferty, Jacobs, & Iddings, 2006). The key issue in deciding between tables and rows,
however, is not grade level or subject as such, but the amount of small group interaction you want to encourage,
compared to the amount of whole-group instruction. As a rule, tables make talking with peers easier, and rows
make listening to the teacher more likely and group work slightly more awkward to arrange.
Ironically, some teachers experience challenges about room arrangement without even having a room of their
own, because they must “float” or move among other teachers’ rooms. “Floating” is especially likely among
specialized teachers (e.g. music teachers in elementary schools, who move from class to class) and in schools that
are short on classrooms overall. Floating can sometimes be annoying to the teacher, though it actually also has
advantages, such as not having to take responsibility for how other teachers’ rooms are arranged). If you find
yourself floating, it helps to consider a few key strategies, such as:
• consider using a permanent cart to move crucial supplies from room to room
• make sure that every one of your rooms has an overhead projector (do not count on using chalkboards in
other teachers’ rooms)
• talk to the other teachers about having at least one shelf or corner in each room designated for your
exclusive use