A Journey Into Flexible Seating

Hi everyone! I'm sure by now you have read many posts and seen many Instagram photos about flexible seating. This past school year, I really started thinking about how flexible seating would work in my classroom and if flexible seating was really even possible.

I had been reading some of the great blog posts out there, such as this one from Kayla at Top Dog Teaching {here} and even a blog post from Kayla's principal {here}. Lucky Little Learners {here} has a great FAQ about how flexible seating works in her classroom, and I used a very similar anchor chart when I first introduced flexible seating with my students.

We started the year off with this set-up.

After all of my reading, I stayed late the last day before Christmas break and completely rearranged my classroom. Who does that? I was determined to make it work though and wanted a fresh start in January. My students walked into this after their return from Christmas break.

Since I was teaching a resource room, my students were already used to sharing community supplies. I kept their pencils, crayons, and scissors in blue baskets. What I found so funny is that my students basically just sat in the same spot as where their desk had been previously.

The standing desks were a huge hit and one of the most used spots this school year. I had several students who were ADHD and extremely energetic. These were fabulous for those students, and I noticed that they typically chose them on their own as a working space.

Along the way, I wrote a Donors Choose project for 8 stability balls and was fortunate enough to have it funded pretty quickly.

I also lowered a circle table and pulled out my crate seats. For testing, I just told my students to find a good place for them to work and grab the dividers (manila folders laminated together).

I used this front carpet for any whole group instruction that required modeling with the document camera. My students were already used to using clipboards, so this wasn't a new skill for them. However, I quickly realized that stepping over students as I was going back and forth from my document camera to the board was not a good choice.

Which lead me to buying another rug from Target, and I came up with this set-up. My rule for students was that your body must be on one of the carpets. This way I had an aisle as a walkway for me to go back and forth from the table to my board.

One day, I happened to come across the highly sought after Scoop Rockers by pure chance. I scooped up four of them, and my students were in love! Have you ever seen anything as adorable as this Kindergartener reading?

This picture here is my proudest moment as a special education teacher. I have always struggled to get my students to independently read. I'm not sure what I did differently this year (other than the flexible seating), but I had students reading independently. 

My students knew that a clipboard was always a choice they could pick for seating.

 By the end of the year, I had come up with this configuration. I "think" I've worked out all the kinks and will be starting off the year like this for next year, with a few minor changes (such as that gray cabinet has been taken out).

 After looking back at this year, I feel like giving my students a choice in their seating was absolutely a positive thing. There were only a few times that I had to make a choice for someone and move them. Whenever that happened, I made them come sit at my kidney table until they could show me that they had earned back their right to choose.

How do you feel about flexible seating? Is this something that would work in your classroom?

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