Student-Led Learning: Classroom Design and Open Seating

Have you heard of Open Seating?  I hadn't and my first reaction was that it was just another name for Flexible Seating.  Was I surprised when I read that it was not!  Was I even more surprised when I decided it was just right for me!

I was tooling around the Net when I happened upon THIS ARTICLE from Scholastic.  The idea intrigued me, but, to be honest, I thought htis lady was NUTS!  Letting kids pick their own seats!  Well, the more my Professional Learning Community discussed this, the more it seemed to fit into the Student-Led Learning model.  We wisely began to look closer at this model and we decided to incorporate one more idea into this.  REFLECTION!  If kids really thought about what worked for them in seating, if kids really thought about location and issues with others around them, could they actually do this?  Could we trust them with this wisdom!  So, we made a decision!  We are trying it out!

With this came the idea that came the fact that students needed a way to be guided and to reflect upon the seats they were in.  Open Seating Posters and Reflection was built upon that idea.  Here is a little video explaining how I set up my classroom and how Open Seating will be used.  Sorry about the VERY quick change over! I'm still learning video!