Organizing Your Google Classroom

When using Google Classroom, organizing your classroom assignments and materials is a must. Otherwise, it devolves into utter chaos making locating materials difficult for you and your students. Luckily, you can easily create topics to help you maintain the order for both you and your students. 

Any organizational system is easier to implement if you start it at the beginning of the year.  That doesn't mean you can't change and adapt it to make it more functional as the year continues, but you do want to make sure you have at least some type of plan. 

You will want to think about what your goals are for Google Classroom, how you want to use it, and how often you will use it. 

Below are two ways I have organized my Google Classroom that I have found effective. (Note: Because of my own classroom experience, this suggestions may be more suitable for secondary teachers.)

General Information

Both of my organization plans start the same way.  I create a topic called "Class Materials". I make sure that this topic is always at the top of my Classwork tab.  Here I post things I want students to be able to reference all year, such as the class syllabus, the classroom library check-out form, and maybe a link to a class Symbaloo filled with commonly used online tools. 

Method 1: By Units

The method I most frequently use to organize my Google Classroom is by units.  I like this way of organizing because students can easily go back to any unit and find all the notes, resources, and assignments for that particular unit.  The current unit is always the one underneath the Class Material and then the rest follow in descending order. Inside the unit itself, I keep the default of the most recent post is at the top.  This way students can easily find the most recent assignment or notes.  

I will sometimes stray slightly from organizing by units when we are working on a big project and give that project its own topic.  I do this a lot when we work on research projects because I often have a lot of materials to push out to them during that one project alone. 

Method 2: By Week

 

When my district had to go online due to school closures, I wanted to change my organizational scheme to make sure that it was very clear to my students what they should do and when.  I decided to make each week a topic. For each assignment, I include the date it was assigned for. The first post in the week would be a weekly overview that I normally attached a video walking them through that week's expectations. (I used Screencasitfy to record my videos, and if you want to know more about that program read our Screencastify blog post here.) I then ordered the assignments in order from Monday - Friday. 

While I prefer this for online learning specifically, it could work in any situation. If you are an elementary teacher who has several subjects to teach you could adapt this by doing a daily topic. 

What organizational strategies have work for you? Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments below.

For more help with Google Classroom, you can visit our Google Classroom Playlist on YouTube.

I will be presenting during the ELA Success Summit on August 4th - 6th. This is a digital summit that you can attend from the comfort of your own home. To enroll or learn more about the sessions you can go to https://www.elasuccesssummit.com/