Anyone have KS1 at tables for mental starter?

I have mine at their tables. They can all see me and I can see them. If they need resources, to write on mini-white boards, show me with number fans, play bingo, they are all handy and easier to manipulate. I don't sit my KS1 class on the carpet very much. I have a rather small classroom and the carpet area is small, so I don't like them all squashed up together. I certainly don't like sitting on a hard floor, in a confined space with other peoples' elbows in my face, so why would the children?

 

How are your tables arranged? I would struggle without a good move round as at the moment 2 kids on each table would have their backs to me, and I only have enough room round tables for the number of children if you see what I mean. What bugs me is that they are so much better during literacy. They love stories and talking about them and get very animated. Then during maths a good quarter of them don't even try. The range of abilities is just too wide to keep them all engaged during the mental part of lesson. I suppose if I had them round tables I could do so by ability and have a rethink about what we do for mental/oral part of lesson, make it even more practical?? Stumped.

 

Thanks sunflower, that's very helpful. Do you have the children grouped by ability? I am going to sit and try and work out a seating plan this afternoon. I will group them by ability so they have a set place to sit for most maths lessons. Its a relief to know someone else is doing this successfully even if it was not driven by behaviour in your case.

 

Yes, my class have three different places - class time, literacy and numeracy. For classtime places they are mixed ability, but for maths and literacy they are ability grouped. Having said that it's all very flexible. They are used to me saying "just for today please will x & y swap places" etc. as they vary in needs depending on the task. This does take some thinking about before the lesson during planning and I have a classroom "map" on the whiteboard with everyone's name identifying where they sit, so if it's a big swap round I do it on the map and get the children to find their name and move to that seat. They seem to love using the "map".