Rows or Groups?

Hi Drew, I'm in favor of groups. In the past, when I had my own room, I set it up so I could switch between rows and groups quickly. Though, in recent years, I've switch to all groups. I've heard from other teachers at my school that groups of 3 are the best as this arrangement doesn't really allow for students to hide.

I've been on Team Groups for a long time. For my upperclassmen, this works well. However, some of my younger students were having a hard time focusing during whole-group instruction. I went for a compromise - most of my tables are in an L-shape with groups of four. 

My classroom is set up in rows, but I assign seats based on student groups. This way students only need to turn their desks to meet in their group. I change up the groups/seats each unit and sometimes have a set rotation when there is an activity that would benefit from hearing multiple opinions. 

My principal has been encouraging the switch to tables instead of desks, but the school budget will make that a bit of a slow change.

Personally I prefer groups because of spacing and mobility in the room but I have recently switched to rows due to student performance and behavior. In groups I don’t get as much participation from the class as a whole but when they are seated individually it kind of puts the responsibility to respond on each individual rather than one or two students who carry the group 90% of the time. 

I have a double horseshoe, I have 13 seats in the middle (where my small classes have to sit) and 16 seats on the outside.   It makes it really easy to break into groups.   There are 6 "corners" and my desk makes 7.

Groups for the win! I've also done U's or Rectangles in my Seminar classes if we are going to do a lot of discussion or student-led classes. It works great - again, only if you have a small class.

I do something similar where my rows can work as groups. When I had pods of tables, I would find a student whose back was to the board or the front of class and they had to twist around to see, which sometimes they didn't and I was staring at the back of a head. So I went with the rows/groups hybrid model.

The L shape solves the issue I had, which was when I had group pods some students, by the nature of the design of the class, had their heads to the board and didn't always turn around when they needed to. 

This is an issue with square groups that I saw as well. Student's could hide in the group and sometimes work was just a little too similar to my liking. 

I am seeing the row/group hybrid provides the best of both worlds.