Seating Arrangements
When setting up a floor plan for students, consider your teaching style and lesson plans and make seating arrangements accordingly. Here are a few options:
Half-circle or circle arrangement
Desks or tables in a circle or half-circle promote community and encourage
all students to participate. Everyone sits in the front row!
Group seating
Desks or tables in small groups work especially well for classes that
include collaborative activities. This arrangement also allows the teacher
to group together students with similar needs, which makes individualized
instruction easier.
Traditional rows
With a small number of rows, this arrangement can be very effective for
teachers who frequently use boards or overhead projectors.
Special needs
Try to arrange seating to accommodate any students with special needs.
For example, a student with ADD should probably sit at the front of the
classroom. Do your best to place a student with special needs in a seat
that does not isolate him or her.
Once you have planned the students' seating arrangement, you should decide where to locate your own desk. Many teachers prefer to place their desks so that they are not the central focus of the classroom. Regardless of where you place your desk, consider personalizing it with photographs, mementos or other items. This will make you feel at home and will contribute to a warm, welcoming classroom atmosphere.
November Events
Find educational resources for every day in November. Fill your November lessons with activities for Thanksgiving (Nov. 27).
Math Printables
Browse our most popular math resources in our Printable Rulers & Protractors Slideshow and Number Lines & Place-Value Charts Slideshow.
New Resources
Not only have we added new printable books for Maps & Activities and The Human Body, but we've also focused on new classroom management resources. Try our Homework Excuse Form, Quieting the Class Quickly, Handling Misbehavior During Instruction, and Checking Student Progress in Homework. Take a look at all the new pages added to TeacherVision.
Walden Forums
Wondering about online education at Walden? Get answers to your questions, meet faculty, and learn what it's like to be a Walden student. Click here to check out our free Walden Forums!
2009 Educators' Calendar
There's something worth celebrating every day! Find fun and educationally relevant holidays, events, and celebrations for each day of the year.
Printable Maps
Enrich your lessons with our collection of printable world maps depicting continents, countries, capitals, political boundaries, lines of longitude and latitude, climate zones, oceans, land forms, and more. Plus, browse our collection of Unites States maps.
Daily Printables
Add a TeacherVision widget to your blog, personalized homepage (such as iGoogle or Pageflakes), or social networking sites (such as Facebook). Our widgets feature a different fifth-grade language arts printable or fourth-grade math printable for each day of the year.
Discussion Guide: The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World
The teacher's guide for The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World, from Penguin Young Readers, is filled with discussion questions, research assignments, and writing activities to engage your students in early American history. Enjoy this book with your students around Thanksgiving or when introducing them to the Colonial Period and Native American History.
