Supported by: Government of Indonesia (GoI) and Islamic Development Bank (idb)

The Importance of Seating Arrangement 
New teachers usually apply standard—traditional—seating arrangements. It is usually with 
frontal rows, the teacher in the front and the students sit in rows. The teacher becomes the center of 
attention. This is probably a good option when the teacher wants to pass information onto all students. 
What the students need to do is just paying attention to the teacher and listening to the information 
However, there will naturally come a time when a teacher will want to choose for group or pair 
work as one of the primary activities in the lesson plan. If you decide to have pair or group work, this 
traditional seating arrangement absolutely not the best choice. If you haven't tried it until now, you might 
need to plan some different activities, for example, a brief 'getting to know you' activity. You need to 
Seating Arangement: ……………………… Name of student: ………………………… 
Name of Activity 
Procedures: 

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experiment a bit. Are the pupils familiar with each other? Who haven't they got to know yet? This is a 
good way to 'test' different classroom arrangements and see how well they appeal to you. 
Do you ever think about the layout of the classroom when you're planning your lessons? 
Sometimes it may be impossible and impractical to move the furniture around at all for many reasons 
including the fact that in some schools the tables are bolted to the floor! It is true that the classroom 
furniture ideally would be light and mobile so you could come in and quickly rearrange it to your liking. 
Unfortunately, in the real world it is often heavy and the rooms themselves are too small to make many 
changes. However, even if the furniture is immobile, remember that your students aren't, so you can think 
about how you want to group students and how you can use the space you have to your advantage. You 
might be able to use spaces at the front, or down the side of the classrooms, letting students stand up or to 
sit on the floor to do certain activities. 
Although it seem like an extra effort and a waste of time, you will find spending the first two minutes 
of a class moving the furniture so that you can see every single face is time well invested. You can 
usually get the students to help you and as long as you give the instructions in English it's all good 
language practice! Budden (2008) suggests some possible classroom lay-outs. Now, let’s look at the 
typical seating arrangements.