I am not a traditional seats in a straight row kind of teacher and neither are 90% of my students.
I do a decent amount of group work.
What seating arrangements work for your high school classroom?
I've done many variations, I like the grouping of seats-saves time with group work, however, some people aren't facing the front, tests (enough said), and ..perhaps because its almost Christmas Break, it is causing them to talk a lot more when they should be listening.
My seats are in traditional rows because my classroom is very small and there really is no other option. In the past, I've put the desks into groups of 4 or 5 and that worked well.
If students are getting too chatty, reverting to rows, even temporarily, will probably help solve that.
Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you said that you were looking for suggestions about seating arrangements because your students were chatting too much when they should be listening. That's why I suggested a temporary change-up to rows.
I have the desks facing each other. There are 9 desks on one side of the room, and 16 on the opposite side. It's obviously not 50/50, but it works well for my purposes! I used traditional rows for several years, but I don't think I would ever go back to that configuration again. This way allows me to get to every student, and to circulate around the classroom, so much more easily.
If I had teachers, or even when I was in a classroom helping teachers, who did a lot of group work they would use circles. Depending on the amount of students in the group. If it was an entire class- 1 big circle, a few students in each 2-3 circles, etc.
