In my first teaching role, seating plans were not compulsory but after a particularly disrupted lesson in which we did not finish getting through all the content, I implemented a strategy with the year 8 students which I learned during an observation in my second practicum.
This strategy allowed students to begin the lesson in their chosen seating plan. During the lesson, students would be given three chances which were written on the whiteboard at the beginning of the lesson and were rubbed out each time I had to wait more than a reasonable time to regroup the class. If all three chances were rubbed off the whiteboard, we would revert to Seating plan 2. I only had to put the students into the second seating plan on two occasions but knowing it would happen was an effective strategy in keeping the class on task.
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