Classroom Seating Chart Maker

How teachers use a seating chart maker

A new class, a new term, or just a table plan that has quietly stopped working — a random starting point takes the negotiation out of it. Paste the class list, set how many sit at each table, and the room is arranged for you in one go, ready to print and stick by the door before the first lesson.

It also settles an argument fairly. Nobody can say the plan was picked to favour anyone when it came out of a shuffle, which matters more than it sounds on the first properly awkward reseating of the year.

• A first seating plan for a brand new class, before you know anyone well enough to place them deliberately
• A termly reshuffle, so the same four children are not still sat together in July
• Splitting a class across tables sized to what is actually in the room — four-seat tables, six-seat tables, whatever you have
• A quick, fair starting point while you are still learning names and cannot yet plan seats around personalities
• A cover teacher’s seating chart, printed and left on the desk

Keeping certain students apart

Add a rule and pick two names, and the chart will not seat them at the same table. It works at the table level rather than the exact seat — this arranges who sits with whom, not the precise chair each child takes within that group — which covers the rule that actually matters in practice: keeping two specific children apart on the day the plan is made.

If the rules genuinely cannot all be met for the room you have — a lot of exclusions and only two or three tables to spread them across — the chart says so plainly, names the pair it could not separate, and suggests smaller tables or fewer rules rather than silently ignoring one.

A chart to print, not a chart to manage live

This tool makes one static chart at a time, on purpose: paste, shuffle, print. It is built for the moment you are setting a plan, not for running one — it does not remember a different layout per subject, and it will not let you drag one child from one table to another once it is made.

If you want the plan itself to be a live, everyday tool — one you can reshuffle in seconds between lessons, keep a separate arrangement for maths and for topic work, and that feeds straight into the group maker and class points — that is what the seating planner inside Classroom Hub is for. This page is the fair, free starting point; that is where you would actually run the room from day to day.