Is there a Seating Plan for Class Engagement ? I think I may have discovered one! Many years ago, I found myself teaching a Year 9 Maths class with significant behavioural management issues. Many had ADHD/ASD and many others were unverified students.
No matter where I placed these students in the class, a negative behavioural “hotspot” outcome always appeared to result. The old seating plan suggestions such as student alphabetical ordering etc… did not work. Without obvious alternatives, I decided to find any codified seating plan for class engagement that might work based on personality structures.
Evaluation of Science for Seating Plan Engagement
I decided to experiment with any sort of “scientific” and/or “pseudo-scientific” method to see if I could somehow match personalities based on intellectual compatibility. I quickly discounted astrology, and other similar options, but stumbled across the older idea of Natural Biorhythms. This was a “pseudo-scientific” method that became popular in the 1970s for matching personality types. What appeared promising to utilise was the specific “Intellectual” or 33-day cycle of Biorhythms, even though it is still a subject of many decades’ worth of study and debate. It is arguably the strongest biorhythm cycle with evidential observations for intellectual understanding.
Dr Alfred Teltscher Student Observations
The intellectual cycle was expounded upon by Dr Alfred Teltscher a Vienna mathematician/engineering professor at the University of Innsbruck in the 1920s. He discovered in testing that his students had a 33-day pattern of well-performing and ill-performing mental agility, (Chemeurope.com, 2020). This was a curious observation. It was the empirical observations of an educator which garnered my interest. Despite many conflicting reports, studies and variables involved with Biorhythms, human observations of educators in a real classroom merit attention.
Emotional Rhythms and other Research
There are psychologists such as Dr Rexford Hersey who provided some older positive studies about the Emotional Rhythm, (Hersey, 1932). Yet, there are many contrary studies which have shown no improvement in Academic Reading achievement using Biorhythms, (Peveto, 2020). These appear restricted to studying individual achievement within cycle timing frameworks, and not matching student personalities. Which is actually the point of the exercise in this particular case.
I wished to sync academic engagement, not necessarily improve achievement per se. Positive academic studies on intellectual biorhythms also are present in some Aviation, Law and Sporting analytical studies. However, many opposing studies exist as well.
Intellectual Cycles and Chronobiology Seating
In any case, the intellectual cycle according to Teltscher governs intelligence, memory, intellectual ambitions, mental alertness, intuition and logical thinking. There are Japanese researchers today who think the intellectual cycle is related to thyroid or other gland emission cycles connected to brain function. Biorhythms might be regarded as pseudoscience, yet Chronobiology is now highly regarded today as both scientifically valid, and it actively investigates the brain and circadian rhythms. This seemed more promising from a mainstream scientific perspective, (Chronobiology.com, 2020).
Circatrigintan Cycles for Engagement
If only some intellectual brain synchronicity between students could be achieved, this might be a mechanism to improve overall class engagement. Circatrigintan cycles recur monthly, and are around 25-35 days, (Chemeurope.com, 2020). If the Intellectual Cycle is a Circatrigintan cycle, identifying what neurological element or hormonal elements causing it would be a further scientific key to understanding.
There have also been studies in chronobiology remarking on cyclical timing in nature and the wild, (Helm et al., 2020), suggesting that brain plasticity and cycle timings are impacted by other external natural elements as well. Regardless, I just needed a solution fast! It was worth trying.
Viable Seating Plan Solution for Engagement
Using student school data, I decided to match my difficult class using the best researched Natural Biorhythms Software available, testing for a paired high compatibility of students based on their respective Intellectual Cycles. What in old biorhythmic terms is deemed an “Intellectual Companion, Secretary or Business Partner”. Students with heavy emotional or physically attractive cycles were thus implicitly never seated next to each other, because of this type of matching.
Any perfect cycle matches, such as people born on the same day, twins or any other high biorhythmic cyclical matches were thus naturally seated as far away from each other as possible. A paired seating plan was adopted, splitting seating combinations in fifteen pairs of two in a typical class of thirty. Immediately the old teacher adage of splitting twins was implicitly handled.
Biorhythmic Engagement discoveries
The combination outcomes at times seemed unusual, but were promising. What immediately stood out was that two students who sat and worked well together, were already perfectly matched intellectually. Interestingly, another student who had no friends in the class, was the only student I could not intellectually match with any other. Something I encountered repeatedly in following years. Over this layout, I then moved combination pairs appropriately for Learning Support and Achievement Levels.
Seating Plan Engagement Refinements
For example, hearing difficulties were placed towards the front of class, best graded A level students in second row. Generally one seats B students in front and in third/fourth rows, with C students mostly at the back, and with more difficult students in split positions across the room. Rule of thumb was always keeping intellectual biorhythmic combination pairs. Once completed, then moving and flipping the pairs according to specific learning needs, grading levels and teacher knowledge as an overlay.
This I hoped would maximise my chances. If a C level student was in the front or second row and matched with another student, I would certainly leave them there. Many other observations and advice were made and are included within the Seat Matrix User Manual. Make sure you read it first.
What happened?
Along came a Friday afternoon Maths period double on a hot summer’s day. Usually what would be behaviour management hell. Armed with this new seating plan, I first re-seated my entire Maths class. The next two doubled periods (90mins) proceeded in almost perfect working silence. The behavioural outcome was simply astonishing.
My proverbial “jaw dropped to the ground”. One difficult female student remarked at the end of class: “Sir, I have never worked in class so hard in my life”. The outcome was simply amazing. I have even rectified problem classes for other experienced teachers, in a variety of different schools now.
It works, but its degree depends on who you have in the class to work with for cycle matching. Many teachers have provided feedback confirming similar results.
More Success!
At another time a fulltime contract at an All-Boys school lead to my being told of a class with very difficult behavioural problems. No seating plan would work, so I asked if I could try my approach. An analysis of that class amazingly found seven of the students were all born on the same day, including a set of twins.
I re-seated all students according to my technique, splitting these students apart according to the method, and teachers ended up reporting this was “the very best of a bad bunch of seating plans”. Many successes reported from other teachers in several schools, have confirmed my thinking that this approach needs to be shared.
The SeatMatrix Software Spreadsheet and User Manual were thus born. It is now up to Version 3.00. If you are looking for a Seating Plan to “fix” your class difficulties, this technique is certainly worth a try. It’s not proclaimed to be a silver bullet, but you will definitely come out understanding your classroom dynamics even better.