Sunday, November 9, 2014

Google Classroom

It's report card time, and I'm knee-deep in essays but I had to stop and tell you all about the wonder that is Google Classroom. My school district is a Google district, which means all our students grades K-12 have a google account. I've talked in the past about how my students having access to all of Google's apps has totally changed my teaching.

This summer, Google introduced Classroom and it's fantastic! As a teacher all you need to do is set up a classroom for your kids to join. As a 5th grade teacher, I teach all the different subject areas. What I decided to do is set up a separate classroom for each of the subject areas.


Within the classroom, you can add assignments. The best part is that if I create a document in my Google Drive, I can attach it right to an assignment, and I can choose to "Make a copy for each student". Each of my kids will get the exact copy of the assignment, and Google automatically changes the name of the document to include the name of the student.


You can assign the due date, and it automatically shows you who of your students have turned it in. Once you're ready to grade, you can grade them all in one place, and send the grades to your students.

But my absolutely favorite function, I've used a few times this year when my students are submitting essays... Once your student submits their assignment to be graded, the document is automatically put into "View" mode for them, while you have access to grading it. That means your student can submit it and then make changes later while you are trying to grade. This is a huge function for middle and high school teachers.

Give it a try if you haven't already! And if you had, what's your favorite function of Google Classroom?