Seating plans allow staff to map out classroom desk layouts and allocate seats to students, supporting a more structured and intentional learning environment. They also provide easy-to-access data about students while during lessons.

Go to My Classes and select on a class of your choice, then click on Seating.

💡 If you don’t usually teach this class, you can search for it by clicking the 🔍 icon at the top right of the screen.

Here you’ll see any seating plans you’ve already created for this class, while also being able to use the filtering and search options at the top of the page to see plans made by any colleagues too.

To edit or delete a plan, click the options menu ( ⫶ ) at the top right of the plan.

💡 If you’d like to access older plans created on the legacy version of Satchel One, please click the link in the pop-up banner at top of page.

Click the ‘Create’ button at the top right of the page, give your new plan a unique name and pick the room you’ll be using from the list. If you’d like to use a pre-made template, select from the dropdown list and press ‘Save’.

If you’re using a template, you should see the preconfigured room layout. If you are starting from scratch, you will see a blank canvas with a teacher’s desk in the centre. Either way, it’s time to start customising your seating plan!

Click Desks at the top left of the screen and choose a desk type that appears on the right hand side of the screen (no need to click and drag!).

Click on the canvas to stamp your seats individually or snap them close together to form a larger table - perfect for building your own custom desk shapes and making the room layout as realistic as possible.

💡 Use the zoom controls in the bottom-left corner to adjust your view. Click the percentage to reset the zoom to 100%.

When you’re done, press Escape (Esc) on your keyboard or click the desk stamp again in the right-hand menu to exit the desk placement mode.

You can update the desk layout at any point by moving the desks.

You can also use the Custom seat option to label seats for special use and ensure that students cannot sit there. For example, seats that inaccessible due to equipment or required for a learning support assistant.

Each student card has eight slots for displaying key data on the seating plan.

Some key things to note:

Once you’ve finished designing your template and have saved any changes, click Exit at the top left. You should now return to your list of Seating templates.

💡 Your navigation menu will have collapsed to give you more space to work - click the menu icon (≡) on the top left corner to expand it.

At the bottom left of your screen, you will see a menu with various options:

The Full screen view offers a whiteboard-safe mode of the plan. Card details and additional student options will be removed to ensure that no sensitive data is visible.

Open the Options menu ( ⫶ ) at the top right of your screen for a couple more options: