Stephanie Miller

Alternative Classroom Seating:It’s a Movement Thing

Our students enter classrooms throughout the day, sitting in desks or tables, typically in rows. We require them to engage actively in the learning process while sitting these desks, tables, and rows. Sharing ideas and cooperatively creating final products, are a few examples of engaging activities that challenge students to use high-level thinking skills and problem-solving techniques.

Alternative seating arrangements can be utilized in the classroom to promote and allow for creativity and engagement in the learning process. Various seating arrangements, in terms of a collaborative setting classroom, allow for varying strength levels of students to work cooperatively and learn from one another.

Will varying seating arrangements and movement improve academic performance? Seating such as tall stools, cushioned chairs, small couches or futons, or even booth style tables, will be needed to offer various arrangements. Teachers will be forced to intentionally plan engaging activities, cooperative opportunities, center-based activities, and use varying teaching techniques.

To gauge the effectiveness of this innovation, baseline data reflecting current participation, behavior interruptions, restless and off-task behaviors, and academic performance will be compared to final data collection.

A post-survey will be used to collect students’ response to the alternate seating. Data collected documenting outcomes will be shared with students, allowing them the opportunity to reflect on the data and their perception of the results.