A simple plan should be made of the fixed points in the classroom – walls, windows, doors, sinks, pegs, benches, gas taps, etc. It is relatively easy to produce a plan ‘to scale’ on computer (e.g. using http://teacher.scholastic.com/tools/class_setup/), or by using squared paper.
Major existing items of furniture should be represented by shapes to the same scale as the classroom plan.
The furniture can be moved around on the plan to experiment with different classroom layouts.
Extension
Careful analysis is needed of the space requirements of each classroom activity and of each activity in relation to the others. It is therefore worth considering the arrangement of the classroom for very different types of activity – e.g. in secondary foreign language lessons, paired conversational work and whole-class question and answer sessions.
