Flexible Seating 2.0

My Life Update
It has been almost a year since my last post.  This is due to the fact that I started my doctorate program at the American College of Education in October of 2016, precisely when my last blog post occurred.  Life got busy!  I am currently taking 9.0 units (3 classes, Applied Statistics, Grant Writing, and Global Perspectives).  Never stop learning!

Flexible Seating Update:
My first year with flexible seating had its ups and downs.  Supplies were the biggest challenge.  Originally, most whole group instruction was done at the big rug in the front, and then for EVERY activity, students waited at the cubbies to gather materials, and then chose a new place to work.  Transitions took a while and I felt like valuable instructional time was lost throughout the day.  I stopped flexible seating in January and February due to my frustrations with materials and transitions.  The first half of the year, I never moved the desk arrangements (which my back appreciated!) since students were able to choose their seats so easily.  In January and February when I reverted to my comfort zone of assigned seating, I moved desks around weekly (more sore back!).  I tried table groups, larger table groups, rows all facing the front, etc, and was never fully satisfied with the classroom.  I had a student teacher at this time who asked about my flexible seating.  I decided to return to flexible seating in the spring, but knew changes had to be made.

Classroom Problem Solving 101
I presented the idea of returning to flexible seating to my first graders and they were excited.  I explained why I took it away (transitions and materials), and asked for solutions.  In the end, we turned desks back around so they could use the inside to store materials.  We tried choosing seats for the day and rotating each day.  We kept forgetting to rotate daily.  We finally decided that we could handle once a week.  We moved the classroom rug to the back, because students could not read the white board from desks when the rug took over the front half of the room.

Friday afternoons we cleaned and organized the insides of the desks.  If students were content with their current seating placement, their organized materials stayed inside their desk.  If students were sitting at the tables on the ground, materials stayed in the cubbies.  I shuffled the equity cards (each student had a name on one playing card) and pulled out one at a time.  That student had first choice.  They could choose to stay at their seat, or stand up and move to any open seat or one with someone's materials on top of their desk.  We did this until ever name was pulled.  We transitioned and got settled into new seats.  This was their place until the next Friday afternoon.  It worked!  I could still move students as needed, and if a child realized they did NOT choose their just right seat (distracted by the neighbor, couldn't see the board, etc), I let them move.  Remember, that I still had about 36 seating/standing options for 25 students.  This left some open spaces for wiggle room as needed.  Sometime, students were required to sit boy girl as they choose seats (to separate the clicks that were too social).  This worked, too.  No one argued over who got the yoga ball or wobble chair, because they knew they would eventually get their turn.

I just set up the flexible seating arrangement for the 2017-2018 class year.  I moved the low tables to the front and sides from the room.  I angled the side tables for a better view of the board (#1 complaint last year was not being able to read the white board or projector).  The rug in the back has the crate chairs and will be used for morning meetings, story time, independent or group work, and restorative circles.  Life is good!

Even more exciting... I bought my first GREEN SCREEN to use with my class!  I also bought my first robot!  The adorable DASH robot.  My goal is to fundraiser to purchase 6 robots for the classroom to be used with coding and STEAM.  This year is going to be epic!

The green screen will be used every Friday (my goal) to publish our amazing work!  My hope is that students can become new reporters and share good things happening at our school site with the school.  They can record each other, edit, and present mathematical concepts, vocabulary words, songs, and stories, commercials about themselves, video diaries, science and social studies projects, and so much more.  This can teach technology, problem solving, creativity, team work, listening and speaking skills, and such.


 Dash the robot (the things on its head allows it to connect to Legos!  Too cool!).  Dash walks, talks, dances, and more.  Students can use tablets to code the robot and can even program their own voice into the robot.

 Darci, a friend from training, is going to try out flexible seating this year.  She recommended wrapping pool noodles in duct tape in a circle to help stabilize them so they do not roll around.  Thank you, Darci!

 Last year I tried colorful dots that were cut from laminated construction paper.  Eventually the kids destroyed them and they were tossed.  This year contact paper is being used to teach the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), and to brighten up the classroom.  Lots of empty wall space right now to be filled up by my student's work.

 

I learned the importance of community building and team bonding at a 3 day trauma training.  I bought a huge Jenga style block set at Walmart to help us problem solve and bond!  It will also be used for Makerspaces and STEAM challenges.

 My district adopted the new Wonders curriculum this school year.  My plan book is out, and I am ready to go!

Flexible Seating and Cubbies!

Flexible seating is going well.  Our biggest challenge has been the management of supplies that would typically be located in student desks.  I made homemade cubbies at the beginning of the year with boxes from the post office.  These were only strong enough to hold the papers going home each day and a library book.  All other student workbooks, folders, pencil boxes, and notebooks were kept in various piles throughout my classroom.  It took several minutes for transitions due to passing everything out each time.  I saw rolling carts on sale on Michael's Craft Store website and ordered 4 (7 slots per cart).  I had never made something like this before on my own.  I came bright and early to work and worked through lunch and built all 4!  I left the wheels off, pushed them together, and now have sturdy cubbies!

Students helped to organize all of their supplies (workbooks, notebooks, pencil boxes, folders, etc) in their new cubbies.  Then we dumped the old cubbies.  The room looks so much better!  Now transitions will be much smoother as students have one place to access all of their materials.  It is their responsibility to keep their cubby clean and organized each day.

Flexible Homework!

The awesome first grade team at my school is mixing things up with HOMEWORK for the first time!  I am excited to be a part of this journey!  I did not create any of these materials.  They were made by my team and/or found from online resources.  In addition to my flexible seating options in my classroom, students also have a FLEXIBLE HOMEWORK board to complete each month.  There is a monthly calendar full of fun and creative things to do at home.  Some are service oriented while others have you create, build, and explore, and some have you go on a scavenger hunt in your home.  Students can choose to complete as few or as many of these choice board activities a month that they like.  The feedback from parents has been wonderful!  They keep sending me photos of their kids making fun things, giving service, bonding with a parent and/or siblings, and more.  This has strengthened the connection between home and family.

In addition to the monthly choice board, they have a weekly "packet" that goes home.  They have high frequency words we have learned in class to practice reading for 60 seconds a night.  Read independently or someone read to them for 15-20 minutes a night.  Then, there are suggested activities to practice their basic math skills (right now- practice counting to 120), spelling words for the week, and an occasional math worksheet that may go home (right now I'm just sending home the math review sheet completed in class for extra practice before math test days).

After being a stay-at-home mom for 7 years, my views of parent communication and homework changed drastically!  It was a constant fight to complete 1-2 hours of homework a night that the kids could rarely do independently (I'm taking crazy long packets of 1st grade homework!).  My kids both excel in school and are well behaved.  Homework became the only negative thing about school, and it made evenings very stressful.  They had already been sitting in a chair learning for 6.5 hours that day, then they were expected to come home and sit for another hour or two to do homework (which a LOT of parent help).  My kids would look at me and say they just want to go outside and play or go upstairs and build with their Legos or play Barbies.  As a teacher and dutiful mom, I made them get their homework done first.  It was torture!!!  Add on soccer practice a few nights a week, a soccer game every Saturday for 4 months, church activities once a week, and you are lucky to have any down time.  My kids also have an early bedtime of 6:00pm, so it made things even more difficult.  Now that they are in 2nd and 4th grade, I have moved bedtime back to 7:00pm in hopes of having more interaction and play time after I get off work with my kiddos.

I do not want my students to go through the same problems and stress when they go home.  My goal is for them to spend no more than 30-40min. a night on homework (including 15-20 min. of daily reading).  I have moved my children's daily reading to part of their morning routine, so now homework after school is more manageable, and since they are older, they can do most of it independently.  Their current teachers are also backing off of sending home "packets" of worksheets for homework.  The focus is on reading their AR book daily, writing a brief summary, and other random projects that come home.

My coworker started the new homework this year after years of her own personal research about the benefits of homework.  She found that there was no real correlation between homework and success or improved scores in school.  Why stress out students, parents, and teachers (hours of grading and recording homework packets each week) when there is no real benefit?  Instead, I encourage kids to go home, eat a healthy snack, unplug technology, and go outside and play!!!  Or they can explore all of the toys in their rooms, use their imaginations, and create something new and wonderful!  My son's favorite time in his room is taking apart his fancy Lego ships and buildings something entirely new from his imagination.  He took apart the Millennium Falcon and rebuild his own "Millennium Pidgeon."  Sometimes kids need the opportunity to be bored and have nothing structured to do.  It is during those times that my kids are most creative and imaginative.

Wobbling our Way to Success!

Thank you, DONORS CHOOSE!  We were able to successfully raise almost $600 to purchase 6 brand new WOBBLE CHAIRS from Amazon.com to expand our flexible seating options in our classroom.  The kids LOVE the new wobble chairs!  Wobble chairs are the #1 choice followed closely behind by the yoga balls.

 Updates:  Many have asked me how flexible seating is going in my classroom.  We are about 3 weeks into the school year, and I am happy to report that the students LOVE flexible seating options.  Students have been responsible about choosing seats that allow them to do their first grade best.  If they do not choose wisely, I warn them, and then move them to a different area if necessary.  Some problems we have encountered: yoga balls rolling around the room (they are round, after all), too much bouncing on the yoga balls (the yoga ball table has been known to be on a "time out" on days where students forgot the expectations, clipboards are left on the rug from students working in the library or from rug and then they get stepped on when people walk around).  Students still need reminders of being responsible for our community supplies.  The expectation is that the classroom is clean before every recess/ lunch/ end of school day.  EVERY student has a job and I give them ample time to complete their job before going outside (librarian, custodian, chair monitor, supply monitor, etc.).  This has saved me tons of time not having to clean up the room.  I wipe down the tables with Lysol wipes (top secret because they are not allowed at my school!) a couple times a week to keep away the germs.  Other than that, the students keep the classroom clean and well organized!

 Class Job chart with student numbers (jobs rotate weekly).

I show up to work a bit before contract time and leave shortly after contract time.  My coworkers are amazed we get so much done and that my classroom looks so nice when I don't live at school.  I said that we work hard as a classroom community and we play hard (we LOVE 5 minutes of fun to motivate students to try their best!).  We get lots done during each day then enjoy going home to our loved ones.  5 minutes of fun is a way to reward awesome behavior.  As long as you have a high enough % of good behavior in Class Dojo, you can participate in 5 Minutes of Fun!!!  If you have struggled with making good choices, you are in a 5 minute time out (sitting at the kidney table with head on the desk while the class has a fun activity). Various 5 minutes of fun ideas: 

• Heads Up, 7 Up
• Snowball Fight
• Go Noodle Dancing
• Hot Potato
• Silent Ball
• Ring toss with orange cones
• Bowling!  (I just got two mini bowling sets from Rite Aide on clearance 75% off)
• 4 Corners

Flexible Seating is Fantastic!

Hi!  My name is Robin Williams, and I am returning to the classroom as a full-time teacher for the first time in 8 years!  Last year, I taught 1st grade part time and the previous year, I was full-time with a charter school and worked from home and on-site with independent study high school students.  I was a stay at home mom for 6 years.  Prior to that, I taught in the Garden Grove Unified School District for 7 years and Alpine School District in Utah for 1 year.  Long story short, this is my 11th year of teaching, and I have the honor of teaching first grade in the Moreno Valley Unified School District!

My perspective on teaching has changed greatly in the past 8 years due to my charter school experience, being a stay-at-home mom, talking with my homeschool friends, and volunteering in my children's classrooms for 4 years.  I had a few special students in my part-time first grade classroom last year that couldn't sit still to save their life.  They stood by their desk, wandered around their desk, rocked in their chair, knelt on their chair, tipped over in their chair, and a great many other things while I was trying to instruct the class.  It drove me crazy that they couldn't just sit still in a regular chair for 6 hours a day like everyone else.  Then I discovered FLEXIBLE SEATING on Pinterest and Facebook and fell in LOVE with the idea!  Why force children who have extra exergy, ADHD, and other challenges, to sit in a hard plastic, uncomfortable chair for 6 hours a day?  If they could still listen, learn, and get their work done while they stood, knelt, and moved around a little, shouldn't that be acceptable as well?

When you walk into a Starbucks, you don't see everyone sitting at school style desks conversing, studying, working on their chromebooks, and enjoying their Frappuccinos.  Some are standing, some are sitting on cozy couches and chairs, leaning against a wall, sitting on stools, and some are sitting at traditional tables and chairs.  There are many professionals who use Starbucks as their favorite place to sit, study, relax, reflect, build connections with colleagues, and more and are very successful in their jobs.  When I worked for the charter school, Starbucks was one of my office meeting places.  I would meet my high school students each week and sit at a variety of seating arrangements to collect, grade, and evaluate their work and discuss their academic needs.  I thought it was pretty cool that they could get their work done in a non-traditional setting and still be successful in their academics.

When I first sat down with my new principal, one of the first questions I asked was, "Are you open to new ideas?  What do you think about flexible seating?"  Her response was, "What would that look like in your classroom?"  My immediate answer was, "AWESOME!"  I went on to explain my vision and share the photos I had found on Pinterest.  School started 3 days ago, and my answer is still, "My classroom looks AWESOME!"

This in my classroom set up after one day of work.  I had the custodians haul out about 8 double desks and at least 20 traditional classroom chairs.  There were no teacher desks available, so I used a student desk for my desk.  The classroom is pretty small, so I had to be creative with the furniture arrangement to make everything fit and not feel too crowded.

Many friends and colleagues are intrigued by the idea of flexible seating, but are hesitant to take the leap and try it in their own classroom.  Instead, they have asked me to share with them how it works in my classroom this year.  To streamline that process, I will share how flexible seating works in my first grade classroom on this Blog page and also be able to document this adventure in my teaching career!

• I made 6 crate chairs ($3.44 each from WalMart and $5 each for the cushions) 
• 6 yoga balls ($7 Amazon) plus a yoga ball for my teacher desk
• $5 cushions for the kneeling/sitting on the floor tables with no legs
• Camping chairs from my garage for the reading corner
• $13.99 colorful rugs for the library from Costco
• $107 big classroom ABC rug from Amazon
• $25 exercise bikes from Amazon for students to "roll and read" in the library
• 1 stool and I had the custodians raise two double desks to the highest height for standing room and put those against the wall to allow for more space (free!).
• I also ordered covers for all cushions so that they could be taken off and washed periodically.  They came on the slow boat from China and had not arrived when I first set up my classroom.  They were around $3 each.

The custodians at my school were VERY helpful with moving out extra furniture and chairs that I no longer needed, raising tables (standing ones), lowering tables (crate chairs), and taking off the legs of two tables.  I can have 25 students in my room and I planned it so there is physical table space for 33 students (not including my kidney table).  This allows for students to have more choices and room to spread out as needed, and if I ever have extra students rotating into my room, I am prepared!

 Flexible seating:

• Two double desks with space for 6 students to sit on yoga balls
• Two double desks lowered with space for 6 students to sit on crates
• Later I made 2 more crate chairs and put them in the library for additional seating.
• Two double desks raised and pushed to the wall for space for 4 students to stand and 1 stool for someone to sit at the high table
• 1 round and 1 rectangular table with the legs removed and 4 cushions per table so that 8 students can kneel or sit on the floor with the cushions
• 1 regular individual desk with a chair for a student who needs some alone time
• 3 double desks with 6 traditional classroom chairs for students who prefer to sit "old school style"
• 1 double desks in the back with the computer tables (tables and chairs for 6 kids at computers) with 2 traditional chairs
• I turned all desks backwards so that no one can access the inside storage.  All table areas are "community space" and no one has their "own desk" to fill with stuff.  This also eliminates the cleaning of desks and the inevitable lost papers stuffed in the back of their desks.
• The library rug area has 2 kid size camping chairs, 2 crate chairs, and 2 regular chairs for use with the 2 exercise bikes.
• There are two holders with lots of clipboards in them by the library in the back and the classroom rug in the front.  Students can also choose to sit or lay down (Yes! You might find students laying down in my classroom!) and work on clipboards in those areas. 
• I have a kidney shape table with 5 traditional chairs that I use for pulling kids and teaching them in small groups.  This table is NOT an option for them when they choose their seat.

I have assigned seating for each student on a letter on the big classroom rug.  Most of the main whole group instruction will be given at the rug.  Students then choose a place to work, grab their supply pencil box, and get to work.  They stay in their chosen seat for the duration of the activity.  They can choose a different place for the next activity.  I use class cards (playing cards with their name on it which I shuffle a lot to keep it random), or student behavior on the rug to dismiss students a few at a time to choose their spot to work.

I created this What's my number? poster to assign each student in my class a number.  Then I made a What's my letter? poster that assigns each student to a letter on the rug.  I have an extra poster to assign students who rotate to me for ELD time.

 In our district, we are not allowed to use butcher paper or fabric on the walls, as it is against their strict fire code.  I had to be creative to get color on my walls and in my classroom.

 I laminated a class set of bright yellow and blue pieces of construction paper and made a bulletin board on two of the walls to display student work.  Luckily I have a lot of flexibility of what I display as long as the standards are clearly posted for ELA and Math in kids friendly terms.  I added a border and my classroom has color!

 I saw adorable large sticker dots that can be used as dry erase boards on someone's Pinterest page.  I LOVED the idea, but couldn't afford to buy that many dots for all of the desks.  Instead, I cut out half circles, circles, and ovals out of construction paper and laminated them and taped them on the desks.  My goal was one "dot" per person.  I later had to laminate and cut more out to accomplish this goal at all tables.  My objective is to both brighten the room, and to be functional.  These "dots" will become one choice for fast finishers.  They can use the dry erase marker in their pencil box to practice writing this spelling and high frequency words and math facts on their dots.  They can also work as surfaces to place their math manipulatives and to keep their desk organized.

 I couldn't afford a $400 wooden cubby system for my room, so I saw an idea on Pinterest, went to my local Post Office, got 27 of the FedEx boxes that you can get for free then pay when you ship, and built my own cubbies.  I used colorful wrapping paper from the Dollar Tree to make it more appealing.  It isn't very sturdy, but it is functional for distributing papers and homework.

 I used more wrapping paper (fairy tale castles), to cover the sad looking side of my filing cabinet.

 On the first day of school, I very CLEARLY went over the flexible seating expectations as well as modeling with EVERY seat type, how to appropriately use each seat.  We also discussed when it was a better choice to choose a seat with a table surface (example, choose a seat with a table when we are cutting and pasting) and when it is fine to be on the rug with the clipboard.

 Birthday caterpillar!

 I didn't like how frumpy my old rumpled up table cloth looked, so I removed everything off my desk and covered it with contact paper.  So much cuter and less bulky!  Now I need a magical way to hide all of those cords...

This is me just before picking up my student on the first day of school!!!  Let the adventure begin!