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Making Seating Charts Easier

Over the years I have experimented with many ways of seating students and creating seating charts.  I am not one to seat kids in alphabetical order by last name and leave them in those seats for the whole year.  I like mixing them up once every month or two. 

A few years ago, I started assigning seats by numerically.  (It is a math class after all.)  It's quick and easy to mix kids up and tell them where their new seat is when I rearrange seating.  I simply wrote the desk number on a small piece of colored card stock and used clear wide tape to secure each one to a desk. 

The problem I have encountered is that they eventually get torn up, sometimes by accident and other times on purpose.  Students may write on the numbers or they just get "messed up" due to moving books and other materials around on the desktops.

Because I like the numbering idea in general, I am trying something a bit different this year.  I am putting the numbers on the backs of the chairs instead of on the desktops.  A young teacher I work with helped me think of this idea!  Thanks, M!

Here's what I did:

I bought these cute tags at my local education supply store.

I liked that they came in five colors.

I used a silver Sharpie to write the desk numbers on the tags.

Then I taped the numbers to the backs of the chairs.

I'll be interested to see how this simple change works out!