As we approach the end of the school year, cleaning, organizing, and (let’s face it) stuffing has started. With all the craziness, technology often gets left behind. Although there are many posts out there about how to clean up Google Classroom, I wanted to share with you how to begin next year off right with Google Classroom.
So once you have returned all assignments to the students and removed the students from your Google Classroom, you ARE ready for next year! Your plan is already laid out for you. All you need to do is make a copy of your class and label it as your “Template Class”. This class will be where you house all of your topics, assignments and tests for that subject. Then next year, as you move through the year, just use the “Reuse Post” option when creating a new assignment in your new classroom. Don’t worry, just because you reused the assignment, doesn’t mean you can’t still revise your assignment or add new ones. It just means you are not recreating the wheel each time.
The first thing I do is repost all the assignments for the next topic so that I can see the big picture before I start teaching the next topic. I make sure to include all assignments (including the non-digital and study assignments) in Google Classroom. This helps so I don’t have to go searching for them in the mess of my Google Drive or multiple applications. I also go through any Google Forms and reset the data (keeping any conditional formatting I have in place) and, I update any Edpuzzle links. I also include assessments in the "Template Class"; sometimes it might be a Google Form, a doc to be printed, or a note to remind me where it was assigned through. This saves me so much time searching in all the different places. If I don’t want my assessments to live in the current Google Classroom available to all students, I know that I can always find them back in the "Template Class." I can assign them and then delete the attachment so it is no longer available to students in the live classroom.
Overall, I love the ease of starting a new topic and how organized the template Classroom keeps me throughout the year.
If you want to read more about how I set up my Google Classrooms, you can read all about it here. You might also want to check out Matt Millers 10 easy ways to clean up your Google Classroom resource!
Christina Macklin
8th Grade Math, Science,
PE & Leadership Teacher
Patricia Kay Beaver Leadership Magnet
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