Seating Chart Maker

A classroom seating chart generator arranges a class list into a plan of the room, so you can decide where each student sits before the lesson rather than during it. A good one does more than shuffle: it honours the rules you set — who must not sit together, who should be near the front — and gives you something printable to keep on the desk.

This one runs in your browser with no account and no student logins. The class list, the rules and any notes you add are stored in this browser and are never sent anywhere, which is also why it never asks for photographs or dates of birth. You can save several classes, print a copy for yourself and a different one for a cover teacher, and generate a term's worth of arrangements at once.

This is a real chart from the tool above, using its sample names: 20 students at 24 desks in pods of four, with two rules (Liam apart from Noah, Mia next to Sophia) and Ethan needing a seat at the front. The orange dot marks him. Below are the two PDFs it printed: your copy, with the front-row marker, and the substitute copy with names and desks only.

• Example PDF: teacher copy
• Example PDF: substitute copy

Nobody opens a seating chart tool because they want a random arrangement. They open it because two students cannot sit together, or because someone needs to be near the front, or because the back corner has become a problem. A generator that only shuffles has automated the easy half of the job and left the half that matters.

So the rules come first here. Pick two students and say apart or together; mark anyone who needs a front seat. The arrangement is then solved around those rules rather than produced and checked afterwards, and it works in any of the room shapes, because what counts as "next to" is worked out from the actual distance between desks — in a pod of four everyone is a neighbour, in rows with aisles the student across the gangway is not.

The more useful half of that promise is what happens when the rules cannot all hold. Ask for three students who must all be apart in a four-desk pod and something has to give. Rather than silently returning a chart that breaks a rule you set, it names the one it could not satisfy and leaves the rest intact — so you can widen the layout, drop a rule, or move someone by hand knowing exactly what you are fixing.

The previous version of this page offered a list of layout presets that were all the same rectangular grid with different names. Choosing "Groups" gave you a grid; choosing "Lab" gave you a grid. It looked like a feature and behaved like a label.

The shapes here are real geometry: rows, rows broken by aisles, paired desks pushed together with a gap before the next pair, pods of four and six, a horseshoe, and a double horseshoe with an inner ring. That matters beyond appearances, because the shape determines who is sitting next to whom, and therefore whether your keep-apart rules mean anything. Paired desks with a proper gap between pairs produce completely different neighbours from a row of evenly spaced desks, even when both hold twenty-four students.

There is also a view switch, which sounds cosmetic and is not. A chart drawn from the students' point of view is mirrored while you are standing at the board reading it, which is exactly when you need it. One button flips the room so the plan matches what is in front of you, and the printed copy follows whichever way you set it.

Ask teachers what a seating chart is actually for and a surprising number say: the cover lesson. Someone who has never met the class needs to know who is who, and a plan on the desk does more for a difficult hour than any amount of written guidance. It is also the reason printing matters more than exporting an image, and the previous version of this page could only produce a PNG.

There are two PDFs here from the same chart. Yours has the front-row markers and any private notes you have written, set small at the foot of the page. The substitute copy has names and desks and nothing else — no notes, no flags. A note you write to remind yourself that a student needs checking on is not something to hand to a stranger, and separating the two copies is the only honest way to let you keep notes at all.

That is also why there are no student photographs. Holding photos of children responsibly takes an account system and a data-processing agreement. For a tool with no login, holding children's faces would be a responsibility we should not take on and you should not want us to. Names on desks do the job.

Three questions come up again and again about classroom software: what happens to student data, whether the product is FERPA and COPPA compliant, and whether it works on a school-issued Chromebook. A tool with accounts and a server has to answer them with a records policy.

This one has no account to create and no server to send anything to. Your class lists, rules and notes are written to this browser's own storage and stay on the device you are using. Clearing your browser data deletes them; opening the page on another computer gives you an empty tool. That is a real limitation — there is no sync — and it is the direct consequence of the thing that makes the privacy answer simple.

For the rest of the lesson, the classroom timer and the classroom scoreboard cover the other two things usually on the board, and the worksheet generator makes the task itself.