Changing Students’ Seats- No Hassle!!

Hey there! I am so excited to be linking up with Curls and a Smile today for a Bright Ideas Blog Hop!! I actually thought of blogging about this as I was going to sleep last night, and I could not wait to share it with you. 

Do you assign seats for your students? As a first year teacher last year, I definitely wanted all of the control that I could get, so I knew that I would be assigning seats.  It also allowed me to separate some of the heavy hitters in my class without having to bite my nails every day over where they would choose to sit.  Finally, it gave my students a definite place to settle down each morning, and they were able to get to their morning work quickly and quietly.

When I began to assign seats for the first day of school, I though to myself, “How am I going to change seats with tables?” When I student taught in first grade, the students had desks, so it was easy to swap spots when needed.  In my kindergarten classroom, though, I had 5 tables.  How was I going to change seats after marking them with those cute adhesive name tags that I bought? Needless to say, this project was put on hold.

***CUE THE ANGEL MUSIC!!*** 

I took a trip to Lakeshore (one of my favorite places on Earth), and was just browsing around aimlessly.  I stumbled upon what might be the best invention ever.  Self-adhesive name plate pockets. What are these amazing little pockets you ask? Take a look!

These self-adhesive pockets allow you to adhere them to your table, desk, or wherever you may be using them, and then take them off and re-use them somewhere else! Whenever I wanted to change seats, all I had to do was peel the name plates up, and stick them somewhere new!  And here is the best part- that’s not your only option! Since they are pockets, you can just keep the self-adhesive pockets where they are, take your name tags out, and redistribute the name tags to new pockets! Why didn’t I use this method? Well, when I had originally shopped for my class, I bought really cute vinyl name tags with numbers, colors, left, right, etc. These name tags were way too big for the self-adhesive pockets, so I wound up having to print out cute name tags on paper.  Thus, my paper name tags ripped more than they moved.  Also, a lot of my students liked to try to take their name tag out which led to me taping the edge of the name tag that jutted out of the pocket.  So, I had to take the pocket and name tag as a pair.

But, either way you decide to move the name tags, how genius is that!? I have to say one of the easiest changes I  made all year was when I had to switch seats.  I am so happy that my seating dilemma is now gone for life!

If you are interested in these self-adhesive name plate pockets, check them out here! Do you assign seats in your classroom? How do you manage that? I’d love to hear in the comments below!