Creating charts in Google Sheets has a slight learning curve, but once you learn it, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to create charts that are easy to read and understand.

Once made, they can also easily be copied & pasted into a Google Doc or Slides presentation.

Pivot tables allow you to quickly grab a set of data from a larger sheet and organize it for the purpose of counting, sorting, grouping, averaging, etc.

Creating a pivot table is helpful to do when you plan on also using that data in a chart or graph.

As with every Google Tool, don't ever think that you need to completely reinvent the wheel. A simple Google Search can usually help you find just about any template you might need (and many more that you didn't think about!).

If you've ever used a spreadsheet tool before, you know how valuable functions can be for saving time and eliminating tedious and repetitive tasks.

Conditional formatting is one of the most helpful features of Google Sheets, allowing you to automatically color-code entries for purposes of tracking data and finding information quickly.

For Primary Teachers: If you don't think Google Sheets can be used with littles, I encourage you to search around online for color-by-number templates made using conditional formatting. Kids love them!

Another helpful feature that can be turned on in seconds which forces your first row or column to stay in place while you scroll through you sheet.

This is useful for situations where you want to see the column headers from anywhere in the sheet, or lock a column of student names while you scroll through their data.

Splitting text to columns means that you would like to take a portion of data from one column and move it to its own column.

Ex. A column contains both a student's first and last name, but you want them in separate columns. This feature does all the hard work for you!

If you plan on having students interacting directly with your Google Sheet, data validation can be used to create drop-down boxes within cells to limit answer options.

Another time & headache saving feature, autofill helps you to either copy data or a formula onto multiple cells, or will continue a pattern for you (dates, counting, etc.).

Transposing is another timesaver that allows you to take data that was input in a column and change its orientation to being in a row (or vice versa).

Google Sheets allows you to quickly and easily print out either your entire sheet, or just an important section.