After spending a few months teaching at home, many teachers and headteachers can be forgiven for not thinking too deeply about their seating plan.

However, with schools set to reopen for everyone, it is important to ensure you have figured out the right way to sort your educational furniture out and decided on the best way to arrange your class.

Your choice of seating plan can be an important part of making sure your students all fulfil their potential, so here are some tips for an optimal seating plan.

Set Up A Quiet Space

Not every classroom is large enough, however having a little quiet area for reading or simply to cool off or check out is important, especially since a lot of students have been away from school for a while and may get overwhelmed.

Make Sure Everyone Can See

Most classrooms have a digital whiteboard and a projector to use as an aid, and any seating plan you set up must allow everyone to see your presentation or visual aids without having to turn or twist to get into the right place.

Room To Move

Make sure that whatever room layout you use allows you to move around the room easily and be able to talk to individual students whenever they need one-to-one support. Set up your classroom as well to ensure that all students are in your eye line wherever possible as well.

Sorting Students

There are several ways to sort students when constructing a seating plan. Popular ones include alphabetical order, by ability or by gender.

This choice often comes down to which plan suits different teaching styles but a study from Montana State University found a positive link between high attainment for lower ability students without affecting high ability students using a mixed ability seating plan.

This is an option but to make sure it works effectively, include as much information as possible on your seating plans, such as expected grades, names, SEN information, medical needs and anything else that is useful to know at a glace when meeting a new class.

Know When To Be Flexible

The eternal dilemma in classes is how flexible you should be with your seating plan once it has been set up.

A seating plan can be important at first to establish behavioural expectations and stop some of the potential disruptions which can happen when students get to choose their own seating.

At the same time, however, it is just as easy to use a system to seat people together and end up pairing pupils who do not work well with each other at all.

Much of this can be solved by simply not firing and forgetting your seating plan once you start. See how it works at first, and allow for changes as you get to know your class better.

If they are working well and would be unlikely to be disruptive then allowing requests for swapping seats may work well or allowing far more flexibility for group work can be effective.

There has been a lot of research on the subject of seating plans but ultimately each teacher is unique in how they teach their class and some methodologies work far better than others for different students and learning styles.