I know the current trend these days is flexible seating and I so wish I could jump on this train...but in my school we have nowhere to store any extra furniture. So we've been told, any furniture (including student desks) has to to remain in our classrooms! Ugh. Not really what I wanted to hear, because this year I had my heart set on going into flexible seating.
With that being said, I continue to focus on Flexible and Collaborative Learning Spaces, which I plan to blog about very soon!
So in the meantime, since my desks are arranged in groups...I use this to my advantage! I love to reward my teams with points during the week (I use Class Dojo) then reward the group with the most points. My favorite reward is to "eat with the teacher". They love it and it costs me nothing but my time. The super fun part is.....I let them choose their group names. Every couple of weeks, I usually rearrange desks, then I decide how we are going to name our groups. Here is a list of ways to name groups:
The students love working together to decide on their group names, this week we are candy names like the Smarties, Lifesavers, Herseys, Poprocks, and Tootsie Rolls!
I got those cute little chalkboards from Walmart, they are whiteboards on the back. I let each person n the group write their name on the whiteboard side. I update how many points the group has on the whiteboard too. Works like a charm to get everyone working together as a team!
Deanna
Good post! I use the same idea in class. My students love it. I have used countries often because that way I teach them about their capitals too.
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