Google Classroom

A Teacher's Guide

The Classwork Page

The Classwork page is where the assignments, questions, and resources can be posted and, more importantly, easily organized into topics. In the image above, you can see that I have two topics created: "Reading" and "Science". I can then add assignments or resources into those topics to be organized and found at a later date.

Creating an Assignment

When you click on the + Create button in the upper left corner, you have six options for creating content on the Classwork page. The first, and probably the most often used, is the Assignment option.

NOTE: Students in your class will receive an email notification and a push notification on any mobile device with Classroom installed when anything is posted in the stream.

First, give the assignment a title, then give the students your instructions. The title is required in order to create the assignment.

Below that, you can add or create content to be attached to the assignment. As you can see in the image, I added a Google Doc to this assignment. Since the item is a Doc, I now have three options designating what the students can do with that document. They can either view the file (good for resources) or edit the file (which is not recommended since they will all be editing the same document), or you can create a copy for each student which is then stored in the Classroom folder in your Drive and can be accessed from the Classroom assignment page.

On the right side of the page, you now can choose which classes will receive this assignment. If you choose only one class, you can also decide which students will receive the assignment. If you choose multiple classes, differentiating to students is not an option.

Also, if you choose multiple classes, you can't schedule the assignment. You have to reuse the assignment in the other classes to schedule them all.

You can also determine the number of points applied to this assignment. This number can always be changed later.

Click on the due date to select when you want it due. You can even be as specific as setting a time.

You can also create or select a topic for the assignment. This way they can be sorted easily by you and your students. You may want to create a topic for each unit, or break them down into skills. You can organize your topics however you see fit.

Finally, you can add a Rubric and turn on or off the Originality Reports.

Rubrics

Rubrics are new additions to Classroom that allow you to create and reuse built-in rubrics for assignments. It makes grading simple and explanations clear for your students.

Once the assignment has been graded, the student will see the rubric and your chosen level and description.

Originality Reports

Originality reports allow you to use Google searches to compare your students' assignments to millions of documents published on the internet. You can run a report or your students can run one. If your student runs one before he or she turns it in, you will see a new and updated report when you view it after the assignment is turned in.

You can either turn on originality reports before or after students submit work. However, if you turn on originality reports after a student’s work is submitted, the student can't run a report until you return their work.

To let students run a report, return their work and allow them to resubmit their assignment. You can turn on originality reports for 3 assignments per class with a G Suite for Education account. To have unlimited reports, your G Suite account will have to be upgraded to G Suite Enterprise for Education.

Once you decide how you want your students to complete the work, it's time to post the assignment. If you click the arrow to the right of the Assign button, you will see three options:

Assign means that the assignment gets posted right away and everyone can see it.
Schedule allows you to choose a date and time that you want the item to show up in the stream.
Save Draft does exactly that. It saves a draft of the assignment which will be posted at the top of YOUR stream, but it will not show up for your students until you hit "Assign" or the scheduled time arrives.

Creating a Quiz Assignment

When you create a Quiz Assignment, you are sent to the same page as the regular assignment, but this time, Classroom creates a blank Google Form for you to use as a quiz. If you already have a quiz created, you can delete the created one and add your own.

The benefit of doing this is that the grades from the quizzes are automatically imported into your Classroom Gradebook after the quiz grades have been released to the students.

Creating a Question

The options for questions are very similar to assignments, but they also allow students to see each other’s answers if you choose.

By selecting “Students can reply to each other”, students have the “See classmate answers” option on their view. If you do not select that option, then students’ answers are all private.

Like assignments, you can apply the question to multiple classes, schedule or delay the post, and attach links, documents or videos.

The default type of question is Short answer, but the multiple choice option allows you to ask one question to gather quick data or a formative assessment.

Creating Material

Materials are similar to assignments, but they don't have the option to assign a due date, and it only gives students viewing rights to any document you attach. Materials are great ways to post resources or links, and since they are in the Classwork page, they can be organized into Topics and easily found later.

Reuse a Post

This is the final posting option you see when you click on the + Create button on the Classwork page of your Google Classroom. This allows you to reuse a post from any other class that you have access to as a teacher. You can then make changes to it for the new post. You can retrieve old posts from active classes, archived classes, and classes that you have been invited to as a teacher even though they are owned by other teachers.

This feature allows you to have a separate class with no students that you can use to house all of your assignments for easy organization and access later.

Once you choose the class from which you want to reuse a post, you then can choose the post to reuse. Before you reuse the post, however, you have the option to Create new copies of all attachments. This could come in handy when using a Google Form as a quiz or survey so you have a new set of responses that are not combined with the responses from previous years.

It is also suggested that you create a new copy of attachments if you're using a post that is owned by another teacher.

Viewing An Assignment

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