Planning for Classroom Movement

Planning for Classroom Movement

    For this activity, I was lucky enough to be able to observe the middle school English classroom of my soon-to-be mother-in-law, Lisa Rearick. Lisa has been a teacher for over twenty years, and she has taught every grade level from kindergarten to seventh grade. She currently teaches in a charter school in Charlotte, North Carolina where she has been teaching for the past five years. Lisa has been a great resource for me, and once I am in the classroom, I am really looking forward to having someone I know personally to share lesson planning ideas with and to bounce problems off of.

    Lisa’s classroom is the largest in her building because she is on the corner. She has two walls that are covered in large windows, which she loves because it lets in so much natural light and really brightens up the whole room. She also loves the general location of her room in the school. It is not right next to an entrance and is the last classroom in that particular hallway, so there is little traffic going by her room to distract her students. Lisa’s desk is at the back of her classroom, but unless her students are taking a test or quiz, she is rarely sitting down. As you will see below in the classroom map, Lisa is very active in her classroom. As soon as you walk into Lisa’s classroom, you can tell it is an English classroom. Her walls are lined with bookshelves, and she has a cute little reading corner, complete with sofas, for the students to sit at when reading. She has a wide variety of books for her students to borrow, ranging from elementary to high school reading level. When I asked her about the range, she said that she has to be prepared for students with all sorts of reading levels, and having books for all of them is really important. The students desks were set up in table groups of four so that students are able to collaborate on activities. Lisa told me that although this is the most common setup for her classroom, she often moves the desk around based on the day’s activities. If students have a test, she may move the desks into straight lines if cheating has been a problem with that particular class. On days that she wants the whole class up and moving around, she stacks the desks and moves them off to the side. She actually did this a few weeks before I came in when she did a whole class poetry lesson where they each wrote one line of a poem. It sounds like that would have been a neat day to observe.

    On the walls of Lisa’s classroom, there were a few different decorations. Behind her desk, Lisa had hung artwork, cards, and other paper gifts from her students, past and present. She said that she did this so that students knew how important they were to her. It made them feel part of a special family in her class, and she worked really hard to cultivate that feeling. Lisa also had a weekly schedule on the board so that students were able to plan ahead. She had hung inspirational quotes on the walls (“Write to prove that we think,” etc), along with a wide variety of student work and some rules and procedures. Everything in Lisa’s classroom was well thought out and served a purpose.

    On the day that I observed, the class was starting in the middle of a unit on major poets. Students were working with their table groups on a poster about one poet they had selected. There were many componets of this poster project (including a bit of biographical information, a famous poem, why we consider this poet to be a major voice in English poetry, etc), but because this assignment asks me to focus on student movement and classroom setup rather than on the lesson being taught, I am going to try to avoid explaining the material. Students worked in groups of four for the first forty-five minutes of class. Lisa was walking around the classroom the whole time. Students occasionally got up from their seats to grab tissues (it is allergy season in North Carolina) or supplies or to get a drink of water (one student asked to get a drink during work time), but for the most part, students remained with their table groups. When the work time had elapsed, students shared their work with the class. Each group came up to the front of the classroom to present the poster they had made on their selected major poet. Each table group walked to the front of the room in a slightly different manner, but for the most part, students walked in the aisles between the table groups. One student in the second group to present took a detour on the way back from his group presenting to talk to one of his friends, but Lisa quickly directed him back to his seat so they next group could present. The presentations continued until the end of class, so student movement (other than groups coming up to the front of the room and sitting back down) was minimal. Throughout the presentations, Lisa sat at her desk chair that she had pulled up to right behind that back sets of table groups. She likes to sit in the back when students are presenting to the class because it makes them more likely to speak loudly enough that everyone can hear because they know that they need to speak up so that she can hear them.

    Overall, I was very impressed with Lisa’s set up and with her students’ behavior. Student movement seemed very natural in her classroom. One of the things I was the most impressed by was how she said that she changes her setup based on what the class is doing. To have that kind of foresight and flexibility as a teacher is something that is so important, and I hope to be able to incorporate that into my own classroom. I know that not all teachers can be quite that flexible because some desks just do not stack the way that hers do, but if at all possible, I would love to have a flexible classroom setup. In a middle school classroom, it is especially important that students can quickly and easily get to their seats upon entering the room because there is so much traffic in and out every day because teachers have a different group of students every class period. Lisa’s classroom was very well set up for student movement in and out, and it worked well with teacher movement as well. It was easy for her to get to each of her students during their work time, and it never felt terribly cramped in her classroom.

Key:

Teacher Movement

Directed Student Movement

Non-Directed, Purposeful Student Movement

Non-Directed, Non-Purposeful Student Movement

Note: Arrows only point one direction for student movement, but students did return directly to their seats (unless otherwise noted with a blue arrow).