My capstone project took place in three French classes. I am the only French teacher in both the building and the district. The classes were two classes of French 2, also called second year French, both with twenty students, as well as a combination of a French 4/AP class, fourth and fifth year respectively, with three students in total. These classes were brand new at the semester. I taught some of these students previously in the Fall 2018 semester but over half were new to me. In the previous semester, I had a difficult time arranging the room due to having a large class size, large desks, and a small classroom space. It was difficult to arrange the desks in a way that supported transitions, movement, and student interaction. Due to the classroom space, I observed difficulty with students being able to easily move around the room to work with each other. The close proximity of the desks caused the students to spend time trying to maneuver around. This, in turn, caused them to be distracted easily and get off-task which caused behavior and learning issues decreasing learning opportunities.

As of the 2017-2018 school year, my building had a population of 1093 students. The amount of those students on free and reduced lunch was 48.86%. Of the total population, the school was comprised of 42.63% minority students, with the largest group identifying as Hispanic. Generally speaking, I will continue to have an increasing number of students that have been or are currently in the ELL program. The ELL program is the English Language Learners program. It provides students with support and an accelerated and intensive English language courses. There are program restrictions for these ELL students: if they can speak Spanish, they are not allowed to take Spanish within the "World Language" program. Therefore, these students will only have the option to select French, which will increase my ELL student population in the upcoming years. I have had a much larger percentage of ELL students than students with an IEP. An IEP is an Individualized Education and a service under the branch of special education services. I also have several students who are already bilingual, most with Spanish and English being the primary two languages.

The high school I worked at is on a semester block schedule, which means that classes are 88 minutes in length, and a traditional yearlong class is completed in a semester. For example, in the fall of 2018, I had three classes: two classes of first year French (French 1) and one class of third year French (French 3). These classes were finished at the end of the first semester, and I had brand new classes in the spring semester of 2019. Since my general population's demographics and room did not change, I took data on general trends of engagement.

The data points included five major areas:

• The average transition time for students to get and put away technology (2 minutes and 30 seconds)
• The amount of whole class redirection per class period, ranging from non verbal such as eye contact or gestures to verbal redirection such as using phrases to signal expectations, subdivided into two categories:
  • Redirections using the classroom rule poster (3 times per period). The rule poster includes the six class rules: listen with the intent to understand, when one person speaks everyone looks and listens, participate, support the flow of language, sit up square up eyes forward, and be kind. The protocol is that when the class needs redirection I point to the rule that needs to be followed and students are expected to comply
  • General redirections without using the rule poster (10 times per period)
• The third was individual redirections during the class period, also subdivided into two categories: one involving cell phones (4-6 times per period) and not involving cell phones (8-10 times per period).

I specifically selected these data points, because they represented the areas of concern in classroom management observed during first semester classes. If they were not addressed through an intervention, they would continue to lessen the impact of instruction.

This data indicated a general need for an intervention that would cut back on transition times and the need for redirections. There is no reason that this trend would not be relevant to my new students in the spring semester of 2019 as general demographics would be the same and the environment as well. The data allowed me to start brainstorming possible interventions that could potentially work in my classroom. One theme the majority of my ideas had was making use of the space that I had while also allowing students choice and comfort. At the time of data collection, I had thick bulky tables that made navigating around my room very difficult. The tables also allowed students to hide cell phones below them. I theorized that if I was to get rid of these tables I would be able to access the rules poster easier and, thus, have more meaningful redirections in less frequency. It also would allow students to move more fluidly around the room and cut back on the transition time involving technology. Finally, if students could not hide their phones behind the desks they would not be as easily tempted to be distracted by them. They would be forced to use them in the open and risk being caught. Using the data and seeing the need for a behavior intervention, I observed similar needs and themes, all pointing to the idea of flexible seating.