Ways to set a classroom, and what each one does to learning

Wherever the explanation needs them, not only at the board. The centre aisle lets the teacher walk into the room during checks, read answers from close up and speak from the middle as often as from the front.

Listening, watching a worked example, taking notes and checking understanding against it. The explanation carries the new idea; the learner’s job is to follow it and notice where it stops making sense.

Low by design, which is fine for short stretches. Learners choose when to ask and what to write down, and the pair checks give each of them a turn to say what they think.

Desks in pairs, eight to a row and four and a half rows deep, bent into a shallow curve so the ends of each row turn towards the board. A clear aisle runs up the middle, and no one sits more than five rows back.

The screen and whiteboard on the front wall carry the lesson. Mini-whiteboards at the desks let every learner show an answer at once. Devices on desks mostly compete with the front, so they stay closed until the task needs them.

The easiest arrangement to reach from almost anything else, and the one most rooms drift back to. Pairs slide apart into Independent Mode, or turn round to meet the pair behind as a quad.

Usually at the head of the aisle, a step into the room, or partway down it during discussion. From there both banks are equally close, and a question can be handed from one side to the other with a look rather than answered from the front.

Following an explanation, then answering, questioning and building on what others say. The board carries the input, but the angle of the rows lets a learner who answers be seen by the bank opposite, so the discussion does not have to pass through the front.

Moderate. The explanation sets the pace, but learners choose when to come in, and because they can see who spoke they can answer each other directly. A short row makes it easy to test an idea on a neighbour before saying it to the room.

Two banks of five short rows, each row turned about twenty degrees towards the middle, so together they make a wide V opening towards the board. An aisle runs down the centre, and a walkway runs along each side wall.

The screen and whiteboard carry the input, and every learner sees them without twisting round. Mini-whiteboards work well here: an answer held up is visible to the front and to the bank opposite at once. Devices lie flat on the desk, below the line to the board.

From Forward-Facing Plus, each pair turns towards the aisle and the pairs close up into short rows; the room keeps its aisle and its front. Back again is the reverse. Moving into groups takes longer, because angled rows do not join neatly into squares.

At the head of one station, teaching six learners at a time while the rest of the room works without them. Their attention can stay with the group in front of them. From the front left corner the other five stations are still in view.

Short, different tasks in sequence: practising with the teacher, working on a device, handling materials, writing alone. Each station asks for one kind of work, and a group meets all of them within a lesson or across a week.

Moderate. The stations and the order are set, but inside each one learners run their own time and decide how to share the work. With practice, groups can choose which station to visit next, apart from the one with the teacher.

Six stations of six desks pushed into a block, in two rows of three with wide corridors between. Each station is its own territory with its own materials, so nothing has to be handed out. The teacher’s station sits front left, its head closed by the teacher’s table.

Devices live at one station rather than on every desk, so the room needs six laptops, not thirty-six. The projector screen shows the rotation order and a timer, which lets groups move on without being told. The trays at the hands-on station hold what that task needs and nothing else.

From Quad Clusters, each pair of quads loses two desks to the teacher’s station and becomes a block of six. The moves between stations are the risk: each takes a minute when groups know the route and the signal, and five when they do not.

On the floor between the tables and the benches, watching for safety and for the moment a team is about to give up. Often demonstrating a technique to three or four learners at a bench while the teams carry on behind them.

Designing, building, testing and fixing something over several lessons. The prototype gives honest feedback: it either works or it does not, and the reason is usually visible. Planning happens at the big tables, making happens along the back wall, and people move between the two all lesson.

High in the design choices, bounded by the brief, the materials and the safety rules. Teams decide who plans, who builds and when a prototype is ready to test. Learners take tools from the carts themselves, without asking.

Ten desks pushed into one long table per team, two tables across the front and one behind, with open floor all round. The back wall becomes the prototyping zone: three maker carts and two standing benches, with room to carry things without squeezing past chairs.

The maker carts hold the tools and materials, sorted so a missing item is noticed. Each team has a laptop or two for research and one shared document for decisions. A mobile whiteboard in the window bay carries the milestones where every team can see them.

Worth leaving set between lessons, because a project packed away at the bell loses a quarter of the next lesson to unpacking. From Quad Clusters, two quads join end to end with two more desks, and the carts roll out from wherever they are kept.

At the front for the demonstration, then walking the aisles, checking that readings are taken carefully and asking pairs what they expect before they look. From any aisle every station is a few steps away, so help arrives before a pair gives up.

Carrying out a short practical: setting up, measuring, recording and repeating. The question comes first, and the pair collects evidence to answer it. Results go into one class table, so the conclusion rests on more data than any pair collected alone.

Moderate. The method and the safety rules are not negotiable, but pairs pace themselves, split the jobs between them, decide when a reading needs repeating and say what they think it shows before the class compares. Nobody needs permission to fetch a missing item from the trolley.

Two desks side by side make each station: eighteen stations in four columns, all facing the front. The aisles between the columns are wide enough to walk down carrying a tray. The back right corner stays clear for the materials trolley and the way to the back door.

A resource tray on every station holds the kit for the practical, so nothing is shared across the room and nobody waits. A visualiser on the teacher’s table puts the demonstration on the projector screen, and the same screen later gathers every pair’s results into one table.

Close to Forward-Facing Plus: straighten the curved rows into a grid and widen the aisles. Trays go out from the trolley at the start and come back at the end, and packing away needs five minutes set aside, or the analysis is lost to the bell.

Between the tables and the set, where they can watch a take and still hear the room. They help a crew set up its first shot, then step back and let the crew run it, and move to a table when a group is stuck on its script.

Scripting, storyboarding, rehearsing, recording and editing. Most of the lesson is preparation at the tables; a few minutes in front of the camera is what it all builds to, and the playback shows each group what to change.

High. Groups write their own scripts, choose their shots and decide when a take is good enough. The order for using the set is agreed at the start, which keeps the corner fair and stops it becoming the loudest group’s.

A pop-up green screen stands in an L in the back left corner, with the camera, the ring light and a recording desk facing into it. The rest of the room is clusters of four, with open floor kept between the tables and the set. The back door stays clear.

The green screen, a camera on a tripod and a ring light on a trolley make the set, and all of it folds away. The recording desk runs playback on a laptop. Groups draft on devices at their tables and bring a finished script, not a blank page, to the camera.

The backdrop, tripod and light go up in about five minutes if they are stored near the corner. From Quad Clusters, the back left quad becomes the recording desk and the other two quads in the back row shift right to clear the corner.

Within camera view and close to a microphone, moving between pods and checking the remote side as often as the room. The teacher’s table at the back runs the class call and the chat, and a learner often keeps an eye on it in turn.

Group work done by teams split between the room and a screen. Each pod works in a shared digital document that its remote members edit too. The test is whether the remote learners contribute to the work, not only watch it.

Easily lower for remote learners, who cannot turn to a neighbour or catch the teacher’s eye. The pods put some of it back: remote partners edit the same document, speak through their own group’s laptop and ask the group, not the whole class.

Six desks to a pod, three facing three, in two rows of three with corridors between. Each laptop stands at the far end of its pod, so the remote faces look along the table like another member. A TV on a trolley at the front left carries the whole-class call at seated eye level.

One laptop per pod, open on the call and the shared document. A microphone in the middle of each pod picks up the group, not the room. A camera on the TV trolley shows the room from where the remote faces are, so the look goes both ways.

From Station Rotation the blocks turn to run front to back; the laptops open, the microphones go down and the trolley rolls to the front. Every change in the room needs a matching move on the call, such as the remote learners leaving the main call for their pod’s breakout room.

Moving through the gaps, reading the mini-whiteboards as they go up and stopping where an answer is wrong in an interesting way. Because the groups are small and open, a correction made at one huddle is overheard by the two beside it.

Short cycles: try a problem alone, compare with a partner, settle it as three, then check against the board. Each round lasts a few minutes, and the point is to catch a wrong idea early, while it is still cheap to change.

Fairly high within each round. Learners decide how to split the problem and when they are sure enough to show an answer; the teacher sets how long a round lasts and when groups change. Neighbouring huddles can choose to merge when a task gets harder.

Groups of two or three desks angled round a shared point and opening towards the board, scattered in staggered rows so each one sits in the gap between the two in front. Open floor runs between them in every direction.

A mini-whiteboard on each huddle, where everyone can write on it and hold it up. The screen at the front sets each round and shows the time left, so a glance up tells every group where it is without the teacher calling across the room.

From Independent Mode, desks close in on their neighbours in twos and threes and turn inward; with the groups decided in advance it takes a couple of minutes. The loose spacing is a useful halfway house on the way to Triad Triangles or Quad Clusters.

Moving between the triads and listening from just outside the triangle, since stepping into it breaks the three-way talk. A question dropped into one triad often reaches the ones either side, which sit close enough to overhear.

Explaining an idea to two others, listening to theirs and deciding between them. With three, a disagreement has a third voice to settle it, and each learner speaks often enough that nobody can sit out a whole round.

High in the talk. The three decide who explains first, how to settle a disagreement and when they have an answer. Roles such as explainer, questioner and summariser can rotate each round, so every learner takes each one.

Three desks turned inward round a small triangle, their chairs on the outside, set out four across and three deep. Alternate columns point the other way, so each triad’s chairs fit into the gaps of the next one along.

Very little, on purpose: a prompt card or a single sheet in the middle of each triangle, where all three can reach it. The screen holds the question and the time, but in every triad at least one learner has to turn to see it.

From Quad Clusters, one desk leaves each square and the remaining three turn to face the middle; the nine spare desks make three more triads. From rows it takes longer, because every desk turns and most of them move.

Moving along the corridors, listening before speaking. Most of the teaching happens at the height of a seated group, and from any corridor the rest of the room stays in view.

Proposing, testing and refining a solution to a problem one person could not solve alone. The thinking has to be put where the others can see it, so they can build on it.

High within the problem. Groups choose their approach and divide the work; roles, where they are assigned, give quieter members a guaranteed way in.

Four desks pushed into a square with the chairs on two sides, in three rows of three with corridors between. Each group sits side-on to the front, so nobody has their back to the board, but nobody faces it squarely either.

One shared device per group, placed where all four can see it, rather than one each. Large paper on the table often does more than a screen, because it keeps the reasoning in view of the whole group.

From Forward-Facing Plus, the front pair of each set turns round to meet the pair behind. With a practised routine that takes under a minute; without one, five, and the problem is forgotten on the way.

Moving along the corridors and reading the boards from a distance first, which shows where each group is stuck before anyone says so. They join a group at its board more often than at its table, and often step back to let the group explain.

Working a problem out at the table, then standing to draw, model or explain it on the board, and sitting again to test it. The board makes a group’s reasoning big enough to argue over, and it stays up for others to read.

High. Groups decide what goes on the board, who holds the pen and when to sit back down. Because the board is public, a group can see how others have tackled the same problem and choose to borrow an idea.

Six desks pushed into a block, side-on to the front, in two rows of three blocks. A mobile whiteboard stands across the back end of each block, with room to stand between the desks and the board, and corridors run between the columns.

The mobile whiteboards are the main tool: large, erasable and readable from across the room, so the teacher and other groups can see the work without asking. A phone photo of each board keeps a record before it is wiped.

From Quad Clusters, three squares are split up and their desks added in pairs to the other six, which turn side-on; then each group wheels in its board. Clearing up takes longer than setting up, because the boards need photographing and wiping before they roll away.

At the back of the runway, in the audience rather than beside the presenter. From there the teacher sees what the back row sees, keeps time, takes notes against the criteria and asks the question that stretches the presenter.

Presenting, demonstrating a process or walking the audience through a piece of work, then taking questions. Knowing the audience is close on both sides changes how carefully people prepare, and the runway lets a demonstration travel down the room instead of staying at the front.

High for presenters, who decide what to show and where on the runway to show it. The audience needs a defined task, or it has none. The recordings let presenters watch themselves afterwards and choose what to change next time.

Two blocks of long tables, six desks wide and three rows deep, all facing the front, with a runway about 1.4 m wide between them. The front quarter of the room is open floor, and the runway ends at the back with the teacher’s table.

The screen on the front wall carries the slides, with every group’s files loaded before the lesson so changeovers take seconds. A camera on a tripod at the back of the runway records each presentation from the audience’s side, which is the view the presenter never gets.

From Forward-Facing Plus, the pairs close up into long tables and slide outwards to open the middle; a few minutes with a clear instruction. Between presenters the next group waits in the open front corner, so a changeover takes under a minute.

Beside the work, not at the front of the room. Walking with one group for a station or two, modelling the language of critique, then moving on and listening to the tone at the others. From the open middle every station is in view.

Looking closely at a piece of work, describing what it does and suggesting specific improvements. The work is the object of attention, not the person who made it, and a prototype on a table can be picked up and tried rather than only looked at.

Moderate to high. Groups decide what to notice and what to write, and the makers decide which feedback to act on. With a loose rotation, groups also choose how long to stay at a piece that interests them.

Desks pushed into long display tables two deep along both side walls: twenty-four under the windows and twelve in the bay, clear of both doors. The chairs are stacked away, and the middle of the room, nearly 8 m across, is open floor.

Mostly the work itself, and paper. Sticky notes at each station keep feedback attached to the piece it is about. Where a project is digital, a tablet sits on its table, so the screen is at the station rather than on the front wall.

From Quad Clusters, each group carries its four desks to the walls and lays its work on top; the chairs go to a stack. It needs the tables set before the lesson, because laying out thirty pieces mid-lesson eats the time the review needed.

Walking the walkways, stopping at a pair for a minute or less, reading over a shoulder and moving on. Because every learner sits beside a walkway, nobody has to be reached across, and the line ahead stays in view while the teacher crouches at one pair.

Practising, checking and correcting: drafting a paragraph or working a set of problems, then fixing what a partner or the teacher spotted. Short cycles of attempt and feedback matter more here than any one explanation.

Learners decide when they are ready for a check, and can walk to the answer trolley without asking. The pace of the practice is theirs; the task and the order of the work mostly are not.

Three long lines of pairs running from the front to the back, six pairs deep, with walkways about 1.5 m wide between the lines and down both sides. Every learner has a walkway at one elbow and a partner at the other.

Mostly paper, or one device each for drafting. A visualiser on the teacher’s table puts one learner’s work on the screen within seconds, so a common error can be shown and corrected by the whole room. Worked answers on a trolley let pairs check themselves.

From Forward-Facing Plus, the curved rows straighten and the pairs line up behind each other, a two-minute job. Turning every other pair round to face the pair behind gives Quad Clusters without taking a desk out of its line.

Standing in the walkway at the mouth of the oval, or seated among the observers as one more of them. The teacher speaks rarely into the ring, turns questions back to the discussants, and keeps time for the swaps.

The inner ring argues from evidence, responds to each other and changes their minds in public. The outer ring watches how the discussion works: who speaks, who builds on whom, which claims go unchallenged. Their notes become the material for the debrief.

High inside the ring: discussants choose what to pick up, whom to answer and when to speak. Observers choose what to notice and when to tap in, and the routine protects both, so the loudest voices do not decide everything.

A ring of ten desks facing inward, about 4 m across from chair to chair, inside an oval of twenty-six desks that also faces inward. A walkway about a metre wide runs between the rings, and a gap at the front of the oval is the way in.

Usually none in the inner ring: paper copies of the text that can be annotated. The prompt sits on the screen, visible over the ring to the observers at the back of the oval. Observation sheets with a column per discussant make the debrief concrete.

From Learning Circle, ten learners carry their desks into the middle and the rest close up into an oval; about five minutes if practised. Swapping the rings between rounds takes a minute, because the learners move and the desks stay.

At the foot of the floor, facing the stand, with a bench on either side. From there the teacher keeps time, calls speakers and notes arguments for the debrief. Once the routine is known, a learner can take the chair and the teacher becomes one more listener.

Building a case, rebutting the other side’s case and defending your own under pressure. One speaker at a time addresses the room from the stand, and everyone else listens for the point they will have to answer.

High inside a tight structure. Each side decides its case, its order of speakers and when to offer a point of information; the format decides who speaks when. Learners also choose whom on their own bench to lean on.

Two blocks of desks, three tiers deep, either side of an open floor and angled a little towards the front. Every learner sees the faces of the other side, and the teacher’s table stands at the head of the floor as the speaker’s stand, with both benches in view.

Very little. The screen above the stand carries the motion and a speaking timer, which both benches can read without turning. Notes are on paper, passed along the bench; a device open on a desk tends to become a search for a point instead of listening for one.

From Forward-Facing Plus, the rows turn a quarter towards the middle and slide apart to open the floor, about three minutes with a practised class. Sides are best assigned before anyone moves, or the room sorts itself by friendship.

Seated in the ring, in the place at the back, at the same height as everyone else. Speaking less and later, redirecting questions back to the group, and taking a turn like anyone else when the talking piece comes round.

Speaking in turn, listening without planning a reply, and responding to what someone else has said. In circle time or reflection the talk is often personal, so the shape does part of the work of making it safe to say something.

High. Learners choose what to share, whom to answer and when to pass. A clear routine for turns protects that, so the confident voices do not decide the whole conversation and passing stays a real choice.

All thirty-six desks in one continuous oval round the edge of the room, facing in, with an empty floor in the middle. Across the circle is eight or nine metres, so a quiet voice needs the rest of the room quiet too, and the ring leaves little space behind the chairs.

Usually none, which is the point. A prompt or a text on paper in front of each person, and a talking piece in the centre. The board and screen are behind the front of the ring, so anything shown there reaches half the room side-on and a few people not at all.

The slowest arrangement to reach, because every desk moves to the edge and the ring has to close evenly. From Quad Clusters, allow five minutes the first time and two once it is practised. It is usually kept for a whole lesson rather than visited.

Mostly in the open centre or at its mouth near the board, moving towards whichever side has gone quiet. Walking into the U brings a side into the conversation; stepping back to the edge hands the talk back to the class.

Discussing a question, a text or a worked example as a class, with the reasoning built between learners rather than handed down. A point made on one side of the U is answered from the other, and the board holds what the class has agreed.

Moderate to high. Learners choose when to speak and whom to answer, and can address each other directly across the U. The board and the open end still pull attention to the front, so the talk drifts back to the teacher unless the routine resists it.

A wide U of twenty-nine desks round three walls, open to the front, with the ends of the arms turned in near the board. The open centre is about seven metres across. Thirty-six is more than one U holds in this room, so the last seven sit in a short row inside the back of the U.

The board and screen at the open end are the shared record: claims written up as they are made, and a text or image everyone can point to. A visualiser on the teacher’s table shows one piece of work to the whole U without anyone leaving their seat.

From Forward-Facing Plus, the pairs carry their desks to the walls, which takes three or four minutes and leaves the middle bare. Closing the open end gives Learning Circle; going back to rows means rebuilding them, so the U is worth keeping for a whole lesson.

In the inner U during an explanation, and during discussion often in the gap between the rings. From there the teacher hears the outer ring, whose voices carry least, and can bring one of its points into the inner conversation.

Discussing a question as a class with the board close by, often in rounds: the inner U talks while the outer U listens and notes, then they swap. Explanation, argument and the record of it can all happen without moving the furniture.

Uneven by design. The inner ring has the easier conversation; the outer ring has to speak louder and further to be heard at all. Swapping rings between rounds, and giving the outer ring a clear job, spreads the better seats around.

Two U shapes, both open to the front, the inner one shorter, with a narrow walkway between them. It keeps a large class in a U without pushing every chair against a wall. The cost falls on the outer ring: it sees the board past the inner ring, and its voices reach the room past the inner ring’s backs.

The board and screen at the open end, as in a single horseshoe, with writing large enough to read from the back of the outer U. For rounds, a timer on the screen makes the swap happen on time rather than when the inner ring runs out of things to say.

From Horseshoe, the back of the U draws in and a second, shorter U forms inside it, two or three minutes with a practised class. Swapping rings mid-lesson is quick if the learners move and the desks stay where they are.