How to Incorporate Students’ Opinions into your Classroom Arrangement

Arranging your classroom furniture collaboratively with your students can be a rewarding activity that shores up good learning practices for the school year.

It’s the first day of the new school term, you’re thinking about giving the classroom furniture arrangement and seating plan a refresh, and immediately you’re hit by the hundreds of considerations you need to make. The troublemakers shouldn’t sit together, this person must be close to the front, there needs to be some space at the back of the room – and you just know your class isn’t going to appreciate some of the changes you’ve made. But what if your students could help you with creating the perfect classroom setup? 

This approach gives some of the ownership of the classroom back to the students, so it is important to form boundaries and expectations of trust for students. This is where you can fall back on the most beautiful thing about teaching – most students ultimately do want to learn. Framing the classroom furniture debate not around “where do you want to sit”, but instead “how can we arrange the room for you to learn best” might give your students the motivation they need to see their learning for what it is.

For younger learners, the benefit of primary classroom furniture and classrooms in general is that they do often lend to creative, unexpected designs. Since you’ll be rotating through a number of different activities with your class on a regular basis, it can be good to negotiate with your students over what types of interactions they would like to have – this might factor in to whether you have a discussion area or a creativity corner, something which the students want to try and make use of. In any case, the arrangement of primary classroom furniture can give your class the opportunity to experiment with different approaches to learning, and to express themselves in a way which they might not have done before.

By comparison, secondary classrooms bear the challenge of functionality. Most students are already accustomed to the standard table pairs, blocks or rows, so your students might suggest a high school classroom furniture arrangement that looks outlandish at first. But once you discuss with your class the types of instruction and activities which they learn best from, they might come to you with suggestions that are surprisingly prescient. Most high school students know their likes and dislikes at this point, and so having the opportunity to communicate quiet study or collaborative work through the arrangement of your high school classroom furniture will enable your students to function at their best. 

When students are given some say over their learning environment, you might be surprised at just how much difference a little autonomy makes for the students’ own conceptions of their ability. One quick classroom restructure based on student input can encourage your class to take ownership of their own learning, and thus hold responsibility for the way they treat their classroom furniture and their learning environment.