Alternate seating arrangement (baseball diamond)

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Dwellings Around the Globe

In this activity students will explore dwellings across the globe. They will conduct collaborative research on cliff dwellings, igloos, longhouses, and yurts.

›› Full lesson

	Coast-to-Coast B...
	Coast-to-Coast B...
	Put Your Best Fa...
	60-30-10
	Turn Off the Tub...

›› Alternate seating arrange

›› Where do the elements and

›› Death in the Dining Room

›› interested in ideas for i

›› teaching ART all these

7/7/2007 12:34:23 PM Posted By Alberto Romero I've set up my classrooms in various rows, clusters, circles and horseshoes for many years now, and the grouping I've found most useful, especially in my writing class, has been the ‘baseball diamond.’ I set up a small group of chairs around a single table on the lower-left and designate that area, the 'on-deck circle' (I've used tape in the past to circle around the groups, but I've found that too confining). Then, I set up four additional groups in the traditional 'diamond' shape of the four baseball bags. Each of the 5 groups relates to both baseball and the 5 steps of the writing process. As the students move from pre-writing (on-deck) to rough draft (first base), revision (second base), editing (third base), and second draft (home base), the mnemonic of the baseball field, and their movement from one 'bag' to another, scores big with the students! This design allows for students to work at their own pace. If a writing assignment is to take a total class time of 90 minutes, then at the end of that time, the students ‘score’ how far they made it around the ‘field’. A student that makes it to ‘home base’ or ‘second draft’, scores a ‘run.’ If the students keep a scorecard, they can score an RBI on their next essay by moving their ‘batters around’. This whole baseball thing can be as simple or as complex as the class allows, space permits, or the baseball season lasts. Would anyone like to add some comments on how this baseball diamond may work in your class?

7/7/2007 12:34:23 PM

Posted By Alberto Romero

I've set up my classrooms in various rows, clusters, circles and horseshoes for many years now, and the grouping I've found most useful, especially in my writing class, has been the ‘baseball diamond.’ I set up a small group of chairs around a single table on the lower-left and designate that area, the 'on-deck circle' (I've used tape in the past to circle around the groups, but I've found that too confining). Then, I set up four additional groups in the traditional 'diamond' shape of the four baseball bags. Each of the 5 groups relates to both baseball and the 5 steps of the writing process. As the students move from pre-writing (on-deck) to rough draft (first base), revision (second base), editing (third base), and second draft (home base), the mnemonic of the baseball field, and their movement from one 'bag' to another, scores big with the students! This design allows for students to work at their own pace. If a writing assignment is to take a total class time of 90 minutes, then at the end of that time, the students ‘score’ how far they made it around the ‘field’. A student that makes it to ‘home base’ or ‘second draft’, scores a ‘run.’ If the students keep a scorecard, they can score an RBI on their next essay by moving their ‘batters around’. This whole baseball thing can be as simple or as complex as the class allows, space permits, or the baseball season lasts. Would anyone like to add some comments on how this baseball diamond may work in your class?

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