How to Assign Classroom Jobs Fairly: Draw the Order Once, Then Rotate

Fair on the day, lopsided by June

When I put the classroom jobs wheel together, I assumed the fair way to use it was the obvious one. Every Monday you put the class on the wheel, spin once per job, and the draw decides. Nobody chose and everybody watched, so nobody can say the teacher has favourites.

That part holds up. Each draw is fair. What I had not thought about was what thirty-six fair Mondays add up to, so I simulated a school year of them. Then I did the same for the rotation most job charts use, expecting it to be the easy fix. It wasn't, quite.

A year of weekly spins

The setup: a class of 25, ten jobs, a 36-week year. Every Monday ten different children are drawn for the ten jobs, and everyone goes back on the wheel for the next week. I ran that year 20,000 times. In a typical one:

• The least lucky child has a job for about 9 weeks. The luckiest has one for about 20. Same class, same wheel, more than twice the turns.
• About 6 children are never line leader. Missing it in any given week is a 24 in 25 chance, and thirty-six of those in a row still leaves roughly a 23% chance of never getting it.
• About 4 children are line leader three times or more.
• Somebody goes around 11 weeks in a row without any job, and half the class has a run of six weeks or more at some point.

The wheel is not broken. This is simply how independent draws behave. Chance evens out over thousands of draws, not thirty-six, and a seven-year-old who has not had a job since October is not comforted by the long run.

They will also tell you about it, and they will be right. The wheel got rid of the favouritism complaint and gave them a better one. Random is a good way to settle an order. It is a poor way to make sure turns come round.

The usual rotation has the same problem, more quietly

The standard alternative is the classic job chart. Everyone moves down one job each week. Whoever had the last job goes to the back of the queue, and the next child waiting takes the first job. Every child gets line leader, which fixes the worst of the list above.

But with 25 children and 10 jobs, look at what one child's year is like. They get ten weeks in a row with a job, one per job, and then fifteen weeks with nothing. A 36-week year is not a whole number of those 25-week cycles, so it cuts off partway through the second one. Some children get two stints, others one and a bit. Count the job-weeks and it comes out at 10 for the unluckiest child and 20 for the luckiest, almost exactly the spread the weekly spin gave. And every child now has a fifteen-week gap built in.

The fix is small. Stop moving the whole block of jobs together, and spread it out.

The setup: one draw, then spread-out clips

This works on any clip chart or clothespin chart. Names go down one side and each job is a clip.

1. Draw the order once, in front of the class. Open the classroom spinner, paste your class one name per line and save it. Leave No repeats until everyone has had a turn switched on (it is on by default) and spin until every name has come up. The Picked this round list fills in as a numbered list in the order the wheel drew them.
2. Copy that list onto the chart straight away. Write the names down the side in that order. Don't leave this for later: the spinner keeps your saved class, but it does not keep the round if the page reloads.
3. Spread the job clips down the list instead of bunching them at the top. Divide the class size by the number of jobs to get the spacing. With 30 children and 10 jobs, a clip goes on every third name. With 20, every other name. With 25 it works out at 2.5, so alternate gaps of three and two: clips on names 1, 4, 6, 9, 11, 14, 16, 19, 21 and 24.
4. Each Monday, move every clip down one name. A clip that falls off the bottom goes back to the top. That's the whole routine, and it's easy enough to hand over to a student.

I ran this through the same 36-week year. Every child gets 14 or 15 job-weeks. Every child is line leader once or twice. Nobody goes more than two weeks without a job, and everyone has had one by week three. Each clip still walks down the whole class, so everyone does every job once in each 25-week cycle, same as the classic chart.

Nobody argues about the order either, because they watched it being drawn. The wheel sorted out who goes first, and the chart takes care of the turns after that.

Where the wheel still earns its place

You still need the wheel once the rotation is running, just for the odd jobs:

• Covering an absence. The simplest rule is that the next name down from the absent child covers the job for the day, which keeps the chart intact. If you would rather draw for it, the classroom spinner has an Absent today list. Tap anyone who is away and they sit out today's spins without being removed from the saved class.
• A one-off job. Somebody needs to take a note to the office, or a new job turns up mid-week. Put the children who are free on the classroom jobs wheel and spin once. Turn on Remove after spin if you are filling more than one job, so nobody gets two.
• Starting a new term. Draw a fresh order in January and move the clips back to their spacing. Children who joined mid-year get a fair place in the draw instead of a spot at the bottom of the list.

Small things that help

• Rotate every two weeks if the jobs take learning. Plenty of teachers find a week is too short for younger children to get good at a job. The setup doesn't change. You just move the clips every other Monday.
• More jobs means shorter gaps. Going from ten jobs to twelve or thirteen for a class of 25 moves the clips closer together, and "paper passer" and "calendar helper" are real jobs to a seven-year-old. If you have a job for every child, the gaps disappear and all you need is the one draw at the start.
• Put names on the wheel, not jobs. For a one-off draw with a full class, one spin per job with Remove after spin on is quicker than the other way round.

The same idea applies to calling on students during a lesson, covered in the classroom name picker guide, and to pairing students up. There are more classroom uses for a wheel in classroom spinner ideas.

What it will not do

• It does not remember the round. Your class list is saved in the browser. The picked list isn't, so write the order down as soon as it has been drawn.
• It is not a job chart. There is no schedule, no reminders and nothing to print. The wheel settles the order and your chart keeps it, on the wall or in a spreadsheet.
• It does not follow you between devices. A class saved on the classroom computer will not be on your laptop. Use Export saved classes to take a backup file with you.
• The numbers above are a simulation, not a study. They assume 25 children, 10 jobs, 36 weeks and a fresh draw every week. Change any of those and the figures move, though the pattern stays: weekly draws spread unevenly, and bunched rotations leave long gaps.

What it does guarantee is the draw itself. The name is chosen with the browser's cryptographic random number generator before the wheel starts turning, so the animation shows a result it can't change. You can check that yourself. The rest of the classroom tools are on the teacher page, all free, with no signup and no ads.