With 3 days of term left for 2010, no doubt teachers all over Australia are pulling their hair out trying to keep their kids engaged and on task, without creating too much mess or requiring too much effort. Especially if you teach older students. Especially if you have year 6.

Christmas craft, end of year concerts, lesson plans from Blockbuster, cleaning up, games days are all good ways to keep them busy and maintain your sanity.

With a class of 20 senior boys I doubted Christmas craft would engage them for the last 2 weeks. So I gave them a mini in class project. After working out which ‘Intelligence’ we identified with (From Howard Gardner’s Theory), they got to choose their own activities form a list of 35. They were grouped into intelligence types and covered a range of tasks on the topics of  Energy and Electricity. They had to total 20 points worth of work to be handed in on the second last day of term.

Well with a class of boys the majority of learners identified themselves as being ‘Bodily Kinaesthetic’ – no surprises then that they all chose to BUILD something!  Cars, houses, lighthouses, switches, circuits… the room shortly looked like a war zone, with electrical equipment and construction craft everywhere.

EEK!  End of the year, I’m preparing to move classrooms and I’m making more mess!  This was a bad idea. But then I notice… everyone is on task. Sure they are noisy, and messy but busy tinkering and talking and thinking. And they are working on these tasks ALL DAY. So I’m accepting the mess and letting them finish the year enjoying the time to create, innovate and debate. Oh and I have some Christmas tasks ready, just in case.

As a highly organised person, nothing refreshes me more than reorganising my desks and my classroom layout. In my first year or two of teaching I used to change it each term. After a while I found classroom designs that work, that suit the ergonomics of the classroom and the needs of the students. Rows, U shapes, Groups, Pods, Single desks, each layout type has its pros and cons.

I’ve always been a ‘groups’ fan, and rarely utilise rows and single desks, mainly because it eats up the floor space. I love having huge areas of space for kids to move around and stretch out on the floor to work. I’ve found groups work very will younger students, but as older kids have more equipment and longer limbs, tables in groups can lead to problems.

This year I have an all boys class, and I finally have implemented a seating plan that I’ve been interested in for some time. The tables are set up around the perimeter of the room, facing the wall. There a few pods of seats that pop out in a group, but the rest are against the wall. This layout allows me to have ample floor space for boys to use, and it means we don’t have to move furniture each time we want to work in a circle, or do some dancing etc.

As well as this, no desk  is owned by a student, they can choose where they work each day, even during the day. It helps that I have more desks than students too. Some prefer working on the floor with a mat, I allow that too. They can work near doors and windows, in groups, alone in corners, the opportunities are endless. It also means no one is annoying each other by kicking under the desk, and I can walk around the room, peer over everyone’s shoulder and see what they are doing.

When I have maths groups with a co-ed group I use the same layout and it works perfectly.  I think I will use this layout for all senior classes in the future!