If you have never heard of Google classroom, it is a service that allows you to share files, create assignments,  grade assignments, and communicate with your students in a paperless way. The good news is that Google classroom is completely free. The bad news however is that your school or district does have to sign up for a G Suite for Education account to use it with students.

Now your school or district can sign up for free and the G Suite for Education account will help to ensure additional privacy and security for students. So, if your school or district is not already signed up, share this information with, and hopefully, they would be willing to sign up once they see all the amazing features Google classroom has to offer.

Now I am going to link the Google classroom website down in the description box, that way you can open it up and follow along with me as I go through this tutorial.

The first thing you need to do is create your class. Now, depending on what you teach you may only need to create one class or you may want to create different classes for each subject you teach or each group of students you teach. In order to create a class, you are going to click on the plus sign in the upper right corner and then click on create a class.

If your school does not already have a G Suite for an education account, you will be prompted with a message asking your school or district to sign up for one before you use the service with students. You will then enter the class name, section, subject, and room number but the only part that's actually required is the class name.

I really like to include my personal name in the class such as Miss Ferre’s Math Class since my students do join multiple classes through Google classroom and I don't want them to get confused about which is which.

Once you are done entering the information you will click on create a class and you will then be redirected to the classes page. Before we navigate this page, I do want to talk to you all about how to have students join your class once you have created it.

You can individually add students to the class by clicking on the “People” tab at the top and then clicking the invite student button next to the “Students” heading. You can then enter your student's email address to individually add them to the class. However, a much easier way to do this actually has the students join your class on their own.

Under your class name, you will see a class code, which is an assortment of different letters and numbers. In order to join your class, students will go to Google classroom and click on the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner. Instead of clicking create class, students will click join the class and then type in your personal class code. You can display your class code in a larger size by clicking on the display button next to the class code.

The good news is once a student joins your class once it will always appear in their Google classroom until you either remove the student from the class or archive the class.

 

Now let's go ahead and jump into the features of the class page. First, you can change the theme which will change up the colors and the images by clicking on the select theme button in the rectangle surrounding your class name. You can either use one of the pre-created themes offered through Google or you can use a personalized photo by clicking on upload photo and then choosing the photo from your computer.

I personally really like to have a different color or theme for each one of my classes to help me differentiate between them. The default tab is the stream tab. The stream tab houses all of the activity that has taken place within your classroom such as any announcements or assignments you have posted as a teacher and any comment or post from students if you allow them with the most recent appearing at the top. You can easily post announcements or add attachments to the stream page by clicking in the share with your class box.

You can either type a message to your students. you can attach files from your computer or Google Drive, you can add YouTube videos or links and then post it directly to your stream page. You also can schedule this post to go out at a specific date and time or you can save the post as a draft to post at a later time.

You can also choose to share this announcement with all students in the class or you can select specific students by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the all-student sections. Now the classwork tab at the top is the main place where you can create assignments for your students. In order to create a new assignment, just click on the create button and then choose the type of assignment you want to create.

The regular assignment option is what I tend to use most often because it is the most open-ended. I have the ability to create my own title, type in my own instructions along with attaching to any documents from my computer, Google Drive, YouTube videos, or links just like before. How this is different from adding an announcement on the stream page is that I am able to assign a point value to the assignment or have it be un-graded. 

I can also assign a due date for students to complete the assignment by and I can create a topic for the assignment. As I described before you can choose to post the assignment immediately, schedule the assignment to go out at a specific date and time or you can save it as a draft and return to it later. I really like to schedule all of my Google classroom assignments at the beginning of the month when I sit down to do my long-term planning so it is done and off of my plate.

The quiz assignment option will automatically attach a blank Google Forms that you can use to create a quiz for your students. The question option allows you to pose a question to your students and then have them respond to it. The material option is a great way to share attachments or materials with your students that you want them to have access to without prompting a specific assignment for them to complete.

I personally use the material option to share digital copies of the notes with my students along with different resources such as a multiplication chart that I want them to have access to all year long. The reuse post option allows you to reuse a post that you have already created in another class on Google classroom.

The topic option is a great way to organize all of your assignments into categories. Under the classwork tab, you can also view the Google Calendar for your class which will house all of the due dates for all of the assignments that you have created along with the Google Drive folder which houses all of the attachments that you have added to your class.

As you add assignments and materials and questions to the classwork tab, they will also appear on your stream tab in chronological order with the most recent appearing at the top. I do want to quickly share a few ideas for different types of assignments that you could have your students complete through Google classroom just in case you're not exactly sure what I'm talking about.

First of all, you can link different articles or websites to have your students do research and then have them answer questions either by using the question option on Google classroom or by linking a Google Doc where you already have outlined all of the questions you want them to answer.

You can also link quizzes or check for understandings through Google Forms that you want your students to complete and the best part about Google Forms is you can make them self-grading. You can also have students, complete graphic organizers, digitally through Google Docs or Google sheets.

The options are truly endless so if you would like me to make a future and tech made an easy video on how to digitize assignments and have students complete them through Google classroom but let me know down in the comments and I can definitely do that. Moving on to the next tab the people tab allows you to see all of the teachers and students you have connected to your class.

I already showed you how to invite students to the class but you can follow the same steps to add other teachers to your class if you co-teach or if you want them to have access to your materials. Once you have invited students to your class you can also invite their parents or guardians to the class so that they can receive updates and check on their student’s grades. 

You also have the ability to email students, mute students which revokes their ability to post and comment on things on Google classroom, this one comes in handy, trust me, or remove students from your class if they are no longer in it. The grades tab is essentially an online grade book for all of the assignments for all of the students that you have on Google classroom. This is super handy to be able to see it all in one place.

You also can go in and any other grades from this screen if you need to instead of going directly to that assignment. You can also click on any assignment and view student work that was submitted or you can click on a student and see all of the work that they have submitted for the different assignments.

The last important feature I want to highlight with Google classroom is the class settings.

You can access the settings by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of your class page. You can edit any of the information for your class in the class details section in case it changes. The general settings allow you to do a lot of different things.

First of all, you can choose to display, copy, reset, or disable your class code. You can change the settings for your stream page and the abilities of teachers or students to post and comment. You also can change the settings for the display of notifications on the string page and you can choose to show deleted items or not. In the grades calculation section, you have the ability to edit the grading system, to either go off of total points or have a weighted grading system with categories.

Now that is all I have for getting started with Google classroom but, I can tell you I have some tips and tricks up my sleeves for making Google classroom more efficient and organized. So, if you want me to do another video revealing all my secrets please give this video a thumbs up.  Don't forget to share this video out with your teachers, friends or your school or your district or whoever you think needs to see it.