5 Tips for Teaching with Google Classroom

With many school districts considering going the virtual learning route in the upcoming weeks it is important to start thinking about how this might look for your students. There are so many great apps and extensions to use, but the thought of coming up with a plan from scratch can seem overwhelming. Here are 5 simple tips to help get you started creating a "digital classroom" for your students. You don't need to be a Google Expert just having a well thought out plan that has simple and clear steps for families will help to make this an easier transition.

1. Weekly Plan

Think about how your class is run and what a typical week looks like. Once you have this invisioned in your mind then it's just finding a way to translate this to a simple outline. This will be helpful to families trying to support their kids and also to students who can reference this as a daily checklist. If you have reading or math rotations keep them. They will just be completing them independently for a little while. Sticking with the routine will be easier for students to follow and less explaining for you to families.

2. Create Your Google Classroom

If you already have a Google Classroom, great! If not it's ok click the link here to watch a video for how to create one. Whether you have one already created or not consider creating a new one for your virtual classroom so all of the work that you post is in one place. This way students and families will just see the assignments they should be working on instead of seeing every assignment in the past and become overwhelmed.

3. Organize Your Drive

After you have an outline for yourself and a classroom for the students don't start posting yet. Go into your drive and create a new folder. I called mine "virtual classroom". Then create a sub folder    "Day 1" "Day 2"...etc. This way you can group the files you plan to post each day in a seperate place. If you aren't sure how to create a folder or need a little refresher click the link here to see how I organize my drive each school year. Here is a visual of what mine looks like in my drive.

📁Virtual Classroom Week 1
     📂 Day 1
            -plans
            -digital states activity
            -digital vocabulary cards
            -digital writing notebook 180 prompts
            -digital writing notebook
     📂 Day 2
     📂 Day 3
     📂 Day 4
     📂 Day 5

4. Schedule Posts

Once you have your drive organized and ready to go it is time to start scheduling posts! Before I start scheduling I like to make a little outline of each day of the week. Then when I sign into Google Classroom in the morning I can just go throught my checklist and make sure I am posting all the assignments I need for the day at the same time.

5. Start and End with a Picture

The last tip for organizing your classroom is to find ways to separate the work each day so students know where one day begins and ends. You can do this by posting a picture like I did to the left each day to let them know you are about to post the work. Also it might be nice to end the day with another image whether it is a positive quote or meme. Even though we can't literally be with the students we still need to make sure we are sending positive messages of encouragement to motivate them to keep carrying on at home.

I hope you found this helpful to get started with creating your own digital plans. If you don't have activities that are digital that you can post in the classroom I did create a week of virtual plans for 4th grade. Click the link below for the plans. All  you need to do is follow the steps to post them and you will be good to go. I'll be working on another week of virtual plans for grade 4 as well so be on the look out for that! If you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out! I hope this helps to make your life a little easier :)

No Prep Virtual Learning Plans

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Organizing Curriculum With Google Drive

Organizing Google Drive is another way to get planning over the summer without having to go into school. With a huge technology shift in education, many of our resources are digital which is great but storing them can become overwhelming when you forget what a file is called. Also teachers that frequently change grade levels like I have the first 5 years of teaching, I learned quickly that I needed to find a way to compile and organize my resources so if I had to pick up and change grades, or schools, i was ready without having to start from scratch each time.

Here is what my drive looks like currently

Each year I always start out by creating a new folder for the school year. If you are staying in the same grade you might not need to create a new one just build off the library from the previous year, but this was just how I started doing it. You can create a new folder by clocking the "new" button and then "folder". After you have done that you can start to create folders for each subject.

After you have your subject folders created, numbered, and color coded, I like to create sub folders for each trimester. Here is an example of how you can go about doing this.

1. Double click the science folder to open it.

2. Click "File"

3. Click "New Folder"

4. Label it "Trimester 1"

5. Repeat steps to add 2 or three more folders depending on if you have quarters or trimesters.

6. When you have finished this you could take it one step further and create sub folders for each trimester. For example under Trimester 1 you could have 3 more folders for units 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3.

This does take a lot of time up front, but in the long run it is time well spent because it saves you from having to search, remake, and re download lessons. I hope this was helpful and that it makes planning a little easier for you. Let me know how it goes if you decide to give this a try or if you have other tips to add to this to improve. I would love to hear!

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Summer Planning

How to start planning for the upcoming school year without having to go in over the summer!

          One of the first things I like to do is get my new classroom layout squared away before leaving for summer. It helps to have a game plan in mind when planning lessons activities and thinking of how I will rearrange the smaller pieces of the classroom once the bigger ones have been adjusted. Also it is great to post on your classroom door or whiteboard because it can help the janitors know how everything was laid out after they finish doing the floors and begin putting everything back in the classroom.

Originally I just drew it on a piece of paper, but then I decided this would be great to do with google drawings so I could save the layouts year after year. Here is the layout at the start of school last year.

Once December comes around and the students have left for break I usually switch up the classroom ,so this was what it looked like for the second half of the year.

This coming year I am switching classrooms so I need to re think everything. As you can see I had tables before, but now I am switching back to desks. I think I will try to keep to grouping like tables except I will make sure to not having any students with the backs  toward the front of the classroom.

If you want to try to do this here are the steps to help get you started.

Step 1: Go to Google Drive

Step 2: Click "New"

Step 3: Click "More"

Step 4: Click "Google Drawings"

Step 5: Name the document by clicking "untitled" in the upper left hand corner of your computer screen.

Step 6: Below the "Format" button you will see a square and circle, click that to find shapes to create your classroom! I usually start with a square or rectangle to get started and keep adding images over for the desks and furniture.

I think that about covers everything for the Google Drawings piece!  I really like it because it is easier to go into school for a shorter period of time with a game plan. Also helps to not have to move all the furniture a bunch of times (because not everything is nice and light). 

I hope this was helpful and makes your start to planning the school year a little easier! Stay tuned for more Google Apps and technology tips to come!

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Parent Portal: Using Technology to Keep Families in the Loop!

One lesson I learned very quickly when I became a teacher was the importance of the home to school connection. Parents want to know what is going on in your classroom when they aren't there and most importantly that you care and their child is having fun while they are learning! Another benefit of having technology is that this allows us to be able to let parents have that sneak peek into the classroom they are hoping for. There are two resources I strongly recommend that are great ways to strengthen and build these family relationships. They are Google Sites and the Remind App.

Lets start with the Remind App. This is a very simple app that allows parents to get texts sent to their phones with little reminders. This is great for homework, upcoming tests, important notices from the office that you want to make sure parents see. There is even a photo option that I use sometimes to take a photo of school notices and send an extra copy digitally to parents. Parents can like the posts and also follow up with a quick question if needed. There are flyers you can print to send home for parents but I usually try to get the parents to sign up the night of open house just so they know how it works and I can answer any questions while they are there. Taking the time up front definitely saves time in the end! :)

Next is Google Sites! This is something I really tried to branch out with this year and am really happy I did! Since the new update Google Sites are really user friendly and fun to make! The layouts are friendly and cheerful. This isn't something you need to have done before the school year starts either. I like to build my site as the year goes on so the parents can see what we are learning about. If you want to learn more and see step by step how you can do this yourself click the video links below to learn how!

Getting Started With Google Sites

Expanding Your Google Site

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Google Go-to's!

Hi teacher friends! In the past few years I have seen a huge increase in the amount of technology in classrooms in my state as well as other classrooms all over the country. Google has definitely been one of the biggest influences in the classroom with their apps for education. They have so many great tools to use! I have put together a few how to videos to help you incorporate some of the Google Apps for education in your classroom.

The past 3 years I have taught second, fifth, and fourth grade. Although these grades vary in content each grade was excited to use the technology in different ways. Some of the upper grades were able to take assignments a little bit further with the background knowledge they already had but the second graders were still just as eager to learn and picked up quickly.

Attached below is a Google link to a playlist I created for a district PD. Once you open the link you can click the images to find video links to learn more about how to incorporate Google Classroom, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Forms, Google Slides, and Google Drawings into your classroom. Feel free to rewind and pause the videos as you go so you can build your digital classrooms at your own pace. Happy planning! :)

Intro to All Things Google Slides Presentation
This link will show intro the basic features of each app

Google Apps Link
This link will take you to the videos so you can apply this to your own classroom!

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