If you have never used Classroom or don't use it very much, I've linked Google's Teacher Center as well as Google's Classroom Help and Classroom Forums sites so you can find resources to help you quickly. The Teacher Center has video tutorials of just about anything you want to know how to do.

These are a few things I do myself that you may find handy

• I make a "Master" version of the two different courses I teach. I create and edit posts in the MASTER class originally and then copy them over into the Google Classroom sections that students join. For instance, I have a CP Biology MASTER with no students in it and then three individual sections for my three CP Biology classes that have my Red 2, White 2, and White 4 students enrolled in them.

  • I've found it nice because I can save the Master class with all the posts I want each year and delete the classes full of students to keep my Classroom and Drive a little cleaner

  • If you'd like to see what Classroom can look like from a student perspective, this is the code for my CP Biology MASTER class: nhy5zwj

    • There are no students in this class so you can leave comments/ask questions and not have to worry about anyone but me or other colleagues who also may join seeing them. It won't interfere with my actual Google Classroom classes at all.

Classroom has added a few new features this year and last that you may not know about. These are are things you can do in Classwork

• Importing grades from Google Form Quizzes

  • If you put a Forms Quiz up as an assignment in Classroom, you can set it to import scores and you can return work directly to the students from the assignment so they can see how they did.

    • *I know we are getting direction not to grade work, but to me, that just means no scores in the gradebook. I would view this as feedback, which students still need.

• Create and Use Rubrics in Classroom

  • You can make an assignment with a rubric that you build and use right in Classroom.

• Using Originality Reports to Help Students and Teacher Identify Plagiarism

  • This is one feature I have no experience using, but that teachers in other subjects may find very helpful. It helps students identify possible plagiarism and make changes to avoid it. When they submit work, teachers can run an originality report to check submitted work for plagiarism. *There may be a restriction on how many assignments on which you can run originality reports - I have a question in to our tech folks to find out what version of Google for Education we are running.

• Betas - These are new features Google is just testing, but that you can sign up to test, too

  • School matches (originality reports) - perform originality reports that would also scan any documents previously submitted in our eaton.k12.co.us domain

  • Internationalization (originality reports) - perform originality reports on documents in French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, or Swedish.

These are a few things I do myself that you may find handy

• I make a "Master" version of the two different courses I teach. I create and edit posts in the MASTER class originally and then copy them over into the Google Classroom sections that students join. For instance, I have a CP Biology MASTER with no students in it and then three individual sections for my three CP Biology classes that have my Red 2, White 2, and White 4 students enrolled in them.

  • I've found it nice because I can save the Master class with all the posts I want each year and delete the classes full of students to keep my Classroom and Drive a little cleaner

• In the Settings gear ⚙️in the upper right of Classroom, I've changed a few things to make my Classroom cleaner and to make communication easier with students

  • With this move to online learning, I wanted to make sure students could ask questions and communicate right in our Google Classroom, so in the General box under Stream settings, I made sure that it is set to Students can only comment. I still don't want them posting their own announcements, but I'd like them to comment on mine if they have questions or need clarification

  • I like using the Stream for announcements and nothing else, so in the General box under Classwork on the stream settings, I changed it to Hide notifications. This prevents every material or assignment you make in Classwork from also showing up in the Stream.

    • Why bother? I make a lot of posts in Classwork and my Stream was a crowded mess before making this change. Students wasted a ton of time looking for things in the Stream when they were beautifully organized in Classwork. I turned notifications off, spent about 2 days training kids to look for our Weekly Calendar and emergency announcements in Stream but to otherwise go straight to Classwork for assignments and my life is about a thousand times easier.

If you'd like to see what Classroom can look like from a student perspective, this is the code for my CP Biology MASTER class: nhy5zwj

• There are no students in this class so you can leave comments/ask questions and not have to worry about anyone but me or other colleagues who also may join seeing them. It won't interfere with my actual Google Classroom classes at all.

If parents want to keep track of their student's progress and work in Classroom, you can enable guardian summaries and they can request to join as guardians

• To see examples of Guardian Summaries and to get information about how to set up guardian summaries on your own Google Classroom, please follow this link to the About guardian email summaries page in the Google Classroom help pages.

• The Guardian Summaries FAQ page in the Google Classroom help pages is a great resource for parents trying to get set up to receive summaries.

Don't allow parents to join your class as students.

• Parents who want more information than is provided in the Guardian Summaries can ask their student to log in to Classroom with their student log in. From there, they are able to see the details about assignments and the feedback you have provided their child.