Originally Posted by MamaRachel
Originally Posted by aquinas
Originally Posted by Dude
Originally Posted by aquinas
I actually like the teacher's approach of not having a rigidly structured seating arrangement. It's teaching the children to be flexible and adaptable, and also providing them with more autonomy in selecting preferred seatmates.

Except that once one student takes a seat, someone not desired takes a seat next to them, conflict (remember, the teacher is vocally advocating that the children learn the consequences of sitting next to someone distracting, as if they have 100% control over that somehow - utter nonsense). Someone else wanted that seat, conflict. Two or more kids want to sit near each other but can't find enough seats next to each other, conflict.

The teacher is probably playing referee for the first few minutes of class every day.

Or the teacher institutes a rule that says conflicting students lose seating selection privileges for some period of time. Then you might have an induction period of conflict, but it will taper off or the situation will quickly devolve into assigned seating. Given that it's mid-October and the arrangement stands, the absolute level of conflict is probably not eating away more than a few minutes of time.

I think this is definitely the case. Also, YDS doesn't seem to know the names of all of his classmates yet, and is quite shy, so that may be another thing we can work on. He knows a few kids from last year (HiCap), but there were only 4 kids from his 1st grade class in his 2nd grade class.

There are 26 kids total.

My DS had a similar difficulty around getting names straight. We played a game, whereby he would meet a new classmate and find out a neat fact about that person each day. It evolved over time and opened up a friendship that's might no otherwise have been made.

What is to give light must endure burning.