Equity vs. Equality

When setting up the seating chart for our homebase, we did not have a lot to go off of other than the pink and blue cards that we received from their fourth grade teachers, and names. We have put the students in pods of four to five so that they would have support available to them for group work opportunities and allow them to still be social while in class at appropriate times.
We were able to try not to place any of the seemingly challenging students together. The actual seating chart has been edited several times since that time because we have gotten to know the students a little better and have been able to pinpoint issues that have caused us to flip flop seats around the room. We are still in the process of moving students around so that they are all in a place that ensures a quality learning opportunity for them.

Some students seemed to have problems focusing next to their friends so we were able to move them away from one another to make a better learning environment for both people involved. So far this switch has helped because it makes talking more difficult, and the urge to do so seems to have gotten less because they are no longer close to the person they want to talk to.

We have also made sure to mix up the boys and the girls in an attempt to have equal amounts of both at each table to balance things out. This is not perfect at the moment because of drops that we have had, but we seem to have a nice balance at the moment.

We were also able to put students with attention problems in areas that are less distracting to them and up close to the board and teacher so that they are more likely to pay attention.

Through these little switches in the seating chart we have been able to make the classroom environment equitable while still remaining equal. We have also been able to use the seating chart to add extra support to students that may need it without drawing attention to that fact.