What No One Tells You About Your Music Classes

Are You Having To Do This Over and Over Again?

I was spending a lot of time, redoing my seating charts. Almost every time I came to school a new student transferred to my music class or moved away. Sometimes I would need to redo the seating chart to move a student that was misbehaving or move the seat of a special needs student being moved from one music class to another. This would force me to use considerable time redoing seating charts instead of using my time writing lesson plans or preparing materials for the next lesson.

I've used a variety of seating charts throughout my teaching career but really liked using computer generated seating charts. This didn't solve my problem. I quickly found that if you change one name on the seating chart, you would need to re-type a lot of other seats again. I just didn't have that much time to type up new seating charts every week. There had to be a better way to do seating charts that didn't take up so much time. One day I noticed the Art teacher using a seating chart I hadn't seen before. It was such a simple idea that I wish I had known about this when I fist became a teacher. I took her idea and tried it out in my own room. I was thrilled to learn that it worked for any style of seating chart. It worked so well that I still use it today.

Instant Seating Charts
Once you set-up your seating chart, you'll never need to retype another chart for the rest of the school year. Here is how it works. Use the smallest sticky note paper and cut them in half. Place one name on the sticky note paper. Do this for each child in the class. Arrange the names on a color sheet of paper to form a class seating chart. Do this for each music class that you have. (I like to tape the child's picture next to their name.

When you remove a child from the class list, just remove the sticky note with that child's name and attach it on your class roster so you know who moved. Simply shift the other sticky note seats around to fill in the gap of the missing child. In a matter of seconds you have a current seating chart. You can easily add children by adding a new sticky note paper to your chart and shift the other names around forming the new seating chart. Place your charts in a page protector to secure the sticky notes. You can also write on top of the page protector with an expo pen to place a grade or small note by the child's name. Quickly make a copy of your current seating chart for a substitute teacher.

I use colored dots on the corner of the sticky notes for color codes to tag special needs children or children that need more help with learning. I only need to record names on my seating chart once each year. I quickly move the sticky notes around whenever I need to make a change. Give it a try. I'd love to hear from you, so please take just a moment to leave a friendly comment below. Thank You!

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