Being a teacher can be difficult at times. There’s typically 2084305 thoughts going on in your head at once–sometimes it’s near impossible to keep it all straight!
That’s why I usually depend on sticky notes, or more recently, my plastic sleeve seating charts.
Okay, what am I talking about?
Well, on the third day of classes, I gave each period a seating chart. These were intentional. I moved students that needed to be close to the board close to the board, I separated friends, and I put people that were talkative across the room from one another. Then I printed the seating chart for each class and put it in a plastic sleeve.
From that point forward, I used these plastic sleeve charts as my grading and reminder system. At the start of each class, when the students were expected to have assignments completed, I would take my chart and walk around, marking the students who did and didn’t do their work so I could remember later and not have to take so much time recording.
In the picture above, I used a system. I was recording who completed their discussion board posts (an assignment where they had to create their own post as well as comment to someone else’s). The students have a purple square around their picture if they completed their own post. The purple dots in the center of their picture (some may be hard to see in the photo) represent those that have also responded to someone else’s post. The red circles mean that student did not complete the assignment. The red ‘AB’ means that student was absent for the in-class assignment. The blue dots in the center of the picture represent students who brought their assigned vocabulary words. And the post-it note in the center of the chart is for me to remember to collect missing assignments from a student who had gone on vacation the previous week.
All in all, the dry-erase, plastic sleeve seating chart is extremely useful. It’s a way for me to organize information, class by class, and reuse the chart every day. It helps me with classroom recording, classroom planning, and assessment. I would recommend it to any teacher!