A simple experiment in my classroom confirmed what I believed for a while – the eyeline is the buyline in the classroom as well as the supermarket. A box of tissues normally lasts about a week, but moved away from the front of the classroom, one box lasted three weeks. Whether there were more sniffs or not was not recorded!

Connected to this is the way that Amazon organises its warehouse, particularly at Christmas. Items do not have one exclusive home – the central warehouse computer instead locates empty space and sends goods there. This in turn creates several locations for the same item. You might think that was a problem for them; it is in fact the reverse. Michael Kavanagh of the FT writes about this in an article on the main Amazon UK warehouse, explaining that the ‘pickers’, who use handheld computers, calculate the shortest distance between routes. By spreading items in several locations around the warehouse, these routes become much easier to complete. To my simple, humble brain, this is pure genius!

So how does this relate to our simple classrooms? This concept of several locations for one item has a charm to it that might well curtail the wandering that inevitably occurs in lessons, searching for rubbers/scissors/plain paper/something a student has. If our aim as teachers is to equip the learning, we must also equip the children. From January, I am going to have four ToolStations, one on each wall, each with the equipment they always want, and mostly borrow. Finding time will be faster, and learning will hopefully be easier to achieve.