Google Classroom

A Teacher's Guide

Getting Started

Before jumping into Google Classroom, it's important to understand a few general aspects of how the application works.

Classroom was NOT designed as a way to communicate with parents. There are ways to share information on Classroom with parents through the Calendar option and you can add guardian emails to send parents a daily or weekly update (see Communicating Through Classroom for more information), but it is primarily a way to communicate with students and manage assignments and materials.
Users can use any school, G-Suite, or Personal account. That means you can add students from other schools or even countries if you want to. This might be a great way to manage pen pals or other student-to-student interaction.
Use the Chrome Browser. Classroom will work in other browsers, but to get 100% of the options, you and your students should use Chrome.
Teachers see ALL comments posted to the Classroom page, even deleted ones.

Logging you and your students in for the first time

This step is not lengthy, but it is very important.

Go to: classroom.google.com.

If you have never signed in before or are not signed in, you will see this screen. ➡

Click on the Go To Classroom button in the center of the screen and sign in with your school email.

When the teacher or the student logs into Google Classroom for the first time make sure you login with the appropriate role of student or teacher.

Create a Class

Once you are signed in as a teacher you can now create your class. Click on the + button in the upper right hand corner of your screen as seen here.

You will then see a box pop up in the middle of the screen. This is where you add the class name and the section, subject and room number.

An example would be:

Class name: 10th Grade English
Section: 3rd hour
Subject: English
Room: 130

Class Settings

It's always a good idea to go to the settings and make sure things are set up the way you want them.

The first thing you'll notice is that you can change the information you just put in when you created the class. That information can be changed at any time.

Next, you'll see the general settings. These are important because they establish what your students can and can't see.

Class Code

This is the code that you can give students when adding them to the class. It can be changed to prevent students from sharing them.

Stream

The stream is the main area on the front page where notifications appear. These settings determine who can post public messages. This can be changed to limit posting to teachers only, or you can open it up for students to post and comment or only comment. This is up to you and is a good opportunity to teach proper internet interaction since this is a closed environment and there's no way for students to hide their identities.

Note: Students can always have private chat conversations with you in each assignment, so these settings to not affect private chats.

Classwork on the Stream

This allows you to determine how much information shows up on the stream. Often times the stream can get flooded with messages and assignments, so you may want to limit what appears there. All assignments appear in the Classwork page, so you can control what appears where.

Show Deleted Items

This is for your view only, but it allows you to see posts that have been deleted.

Guardian Summaries

This is the only connection parents have to Google Classroom. If you have a guardian's email connected with a student and you turn this setting on, parents will get an email displaying their child's recent work, missing work, and upcoming assignments.

Google Meet

This is a new setting that allows you to create a Google Meet link specifically for your class. You can make it visible for your students or you can hide it. The link can also be changed to keep students from going back in after the video chat is over.

The final section of the settings is the Grading settings. Here you can create grade categories, decide how the final grades are calculated and decide whether or not students see their overall grades.

Google Classroom grades can now be integrated with most popular SIS systems, so check with your SIS admin to see if that portion will work for you.

Adding Students

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