Thanks to Ciara Brennan for tweeting about this web site during the week. ClassroomDeskArrangement.com is the rather long-winded domain for a highly useful purpose – arranging your tables in your classroom. The web site appears to be run by a group in the UK and offers advice on classroom layouts for classrooms with 16 to 30 pupils in them.
I know in Ireland, in most schools, we can only dream of classrooms with 16 pupils in them and, to be fair, in the majority of counties over 20% of classrooms have more than 30 pupils in them so this site isn’t going to help them!
However, if you are in the fortunate position of having between 16 and 30 pupils in your classroom, this is a great web site for looking at ideas for classroom layout. One example from a 30 pupil room is called Pancakes and Bacon. The web site shows a picture of what this looks like, (see right), and gives a description of what it is good for. For example, this layout seems to be good discussion and performance, which wouldn’t be what you might want when you want a quiet classroom. There are tonnes of different ideas and, while the web site isn’t the most glamorous one out there, it is functional and gives the user simple but effective advice on laying out the classroom.
Last Update: August 9, 2017
That website gives some food for thought certainly. Thank you. I find it challenging to arrange the desks so children can see the blackboard and the interactive whiteboard as they are on opposite walls. I find the following website saves me physically moving the furniture only to find the arrangement doesn’t work and I have overlooked something. http://teacher.scholastic.com/tools/class_setup/ and I saw this one recommended recently too: http://classroom.4teachers.org/ I thought you might find them interesting.
Thanks for the comment, Merry Beau. It’s amazing that there’s so much scope and interesting the theory behind each layout.