The moment
It is the second hour of the morning. Half the class sits on a cotton mat spread across the floor, the other half on plastic chairs at desks that reach almost to their chests. On the mat, a girl has folded one leg under her and leans on her elbows over a picture book. On a chair, a boy’s feet dangle above the tiles. He hooks an ankle round the chair leg, tips back, catches himself with a scrape, and hears his name for the third time. Both children are listening. Only one of them looks like it.
The practice
Begin by watching. For one week, spend two minutes of each lesson looking only at bodies. Who is on the floor and who is on a chair? Whose feet reach the ground? You will often find that the furniture was decided long before the lesson was.
Then match the seat to the work. The floor suits gathering, stories, talk in a circle and work with large materials. A chair and table suit writing, careful drawing and anything that needs a firm surface near elbow height. For up to forty children, a few mats and the chairs you already have are enough. Check the chairs once. Feet should rest flat on the floor, and a folded cloth or a sturdy box under dangling feet fixes most mismatches for nothing.
Then give the floor some shape. Floor sitting works best when each child knows their place, so mark out a circle, or give each child a chalk mark or a small square of cloth. Allow more than one way to sit, cross-legged, kneeling, on the heels or with legs to one side. Young bodies are not built to sit still for long, and the shifting is part of how they stay with you.
Finally, move between the two every day. For younger children a good rhythm is to listen on the floor, write at the table, then return to the floor to share. Each change takes under a minute and quietly lets stiff bodies move. Older children can choose their seat for part of the week and explain why.
Keep the floor clean and dry, with a mat on cold or hard surfaces. Some children cannot sit on the floor because of injury, disability or pain. Offer a chair or a low stool without fuss, and never use a posture as a punishment.
What to watch for
When it is working, children settle into a position and then make small adjustments without disturbing anyone. Heads lift during the story. Hands are free to point and gesture. At the table, shoulders drop and the writing hand moves easily.
When it is not working, you see slumping onto the desk, legs wrapped round chair legs, constant tipping, or a child who goes very still and very blank. Stillness is not the same as attention. If a child refuses the floor, ask quietly and in private. There may be pain, an old embarrassment or clothing that makes it hard. If a child cannot stay comfortable in any position, struggles to sit upright without support or speaks of pain in the back or legs, talk to the parents and suggest a check with a doctor or an occupational therapist.
Why it works
Neither the floor nor the chair is the one natural way to learn. Gordon Hewes, an anthropologist who surveyed resting postures worldwide in the 1950s, wrote that at least a quarter of humanity rested in a deep squat. The trouble begins when one posture is held for most of the day. Clemes and colleagues found primary school children in the UK and Australia sitting for roughly two thirds or more of class time. Furniture often fits badly too. Gouvali and Boudolos found desks too high for about four in five of the Greek schoolchildren they measured.
Movement is not always the enemy of attention. Schilling and colleagues found that three children with ADHD stayed seated more and wrote more legible words on therapy balls than on chairs. Sarver and colleagues found that in children with ADHD, more movement went with better working memory, though not in typically developing children. Neither study shows that the floor beats the chair. Attention is something the body does, and the seat either helps it or works against it.
A room’s furniture invites some bodies and refuses others before the teacher says a word. So what are we really asking of a child when the room has given them nowhere to put their feet?
Why this works: R12 Attention is a bodily act, not a mental effort, R3 Affordances: what a classroom invites a child to do, R47 Sitting still: what a young body can and cannot do, R50 When stillness is mistaken for attention
Next in Sitting and posture: P12 Changing position every twenty minutes
Notes
- Rybczynski, W. (2016, 23 August). Sitting up: A brief history of chairs. The Paris Review Daily. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/?p=101738 (reporting Gordon W. Hewes’s survey of human postures).
- Clemes, S. A., Barber, S. E., Bingham, D. D., et al. (2016). Reducing children’s classroom sitting time using sit-to-stand desks: Findings from pilot studies in UK and Australian primary schools. Journal of Public Health, 38(3), 526–533.
- Gouvali, M. K., & Boudolos, K. (2006). Match between school furniture dimensions and children’s anthropometry. Applied Ergonomics, 37, 765–773.
- Schilling, D. L., Washington, K., Billingsley, F. F., & Deitz, J. (2003). Classroom seating for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Therapy balls versus chairs. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 57(5), 534–541.
- Sarver, D. E., Rapport, M. D., Kofler, M. J., Raiker, J. S., & Friedman, L. M. (2015). Hyperactivity in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): Impairing deficit or compensatory behavior? Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 43(7), 1181–1197.