PSA: Don't Reinvent the Wheel, Copy your Google Classroom

If you are using Google Classroom as your LMS, you are saving yourself and your students from disorganization. If you enable the SIS sync with infinite campus, you can import grades and assignments to make keeping your gradebook up-to-date easy. And perhaps more importantly, if you organize your LMS space well, you are supporting students success.

EdSurge reported that "on an average day, a student has to navigate between as many as 10 different platforms—in a single class! Students expressed frustration with not knowing where to find assignments. Most said they didn’t have a preferred organization system; they just asked the kid in class that seemed to be the most organized."

To support student executive skills, you want to think carefully this year about how best to organize your Google Classroom. Often week-by-week is easiest, with teachers archiving older materials below, and creating a new classroom for each term.

If this sounds like a lot, it's not! Once you have a set up in place, you can copy formatting from term to term and year to year. 

This means that if you used Google Classroom well last year, you can save yourself time and headache by copying your entire classroom or copying your assignments! 

Here are the steps:

1) Prepare the old classroom: remove or note# classwork materials that didn't work or needs revision.

*Note that if you don't want copies of materials, don't copy your classroom with files attached to assignments. 

2) Make a copy!

3) Update the files, if needed, as you go. This is where the # system is helpful.

Now, if you didn't love how your classroom was organized last year OR you want to make some updates to your classroom copy, check out the video below for some useful tips:

Start with a Vision for your Classroom

There was quite a bit of talk in education circles over the summer about how new advances in VR and in the development of the "metaverse" would impact education. Will this be a way to connect students to people and places they would never otherwise see--or will it be a gimmick?

We'll have to wait to see, but it did get us thinking about the renewed interest in visualization. 

Visualization, imagining things at their very best or mentally (or virtually) rehearsing what you want to see or do before you actually do it, has been proven to have a powerful impact on performance. Olympic athletes use it. Business executives use it. And more and more, educators are using it too.

Visualization is a brain booster, impacting memory, planning, and control. And creating and staying focused on a vision is a great way to meet your goals.

As we start the year, it is worth taking some time to visualize your ideal classroom. 

• What are the students feeling? How do you see this in the way the students are behaving?
• What does the learning look like? What are students doing? Where are they?
• What will the teacher be doing? What is the lead learner's role?
• What academic and social/emotional results are evident?

Brainstorm or take note of what you see. Then identify the 3-5 elements of your "vision" that you want to focus on every day as you set your goals. 

When you plan your lesson, you can keep these elements in front of you. When you reflect on class that day, you can think about how it aligned to your vision--and what you might want to shift to make that vision more of a reality.

You could even try making a vision board. Jennifer Gonzalez recently shared how teachers are using vision board to plan units (it's very cool), and this speaks to the power of keeping this "vision" at the metaphorical or literal front of your classroom, as well as the power of involving students in creating the vision.

What is your vision for learning in your classroom this year? 

Professional Learning for Sustainable Teaching

Many educators have shared that this summer, they just need a break. And "unplugging" is absolutely one important part of self-care. 

But for others, summer is a time more akin to an athlete's off-season, a time of rest and rejuvenation, but also a time to think and plan ahead.

And if we want our regular school year to be sustainable, having the mental and physical space to make plans for our teaching can be vital.

One inspiring read, for those who want to let their minds wander, is Catlin Tucker's recent blog post "Could Doing Less in Education Give Everyone More?" The takeaway: think about what is on your plate that you can remove. As you think about what you typically do during the year, ask the question: "Do I have to?" and focus only on what is most essential.

A helpful resource for this is the Modern Classrooms Project. This model is all about MASTERY-based, self-paced, blended learning, but we love the approach of thinking of assignments as "Must Do, Should Do, and Aspire to Do." If we focus carefully on those things that we must do, then we can feel good about that baseline, and even better when we exceed it. MCP has a free online course that is FULL of resources, and several GPS teachers are taking advantage of summer scholarships to take the advanced mentorship.

This approach also helps teachers think about how to empower learners more and increase engagement. Teaching students to be more independent and given them the space to do the work allows them to lead their own learning. For more on this, Paul Emerich France has a 5 minute read that will spark your thinking.

Finally, if you are looking to dive into some other, more specific professional learning, whether small or big, check out the GPS Summer PD choice board, modified from one created by Ditch that Textbook.

Whatever learning or reflection you participate in, celebrate the fact that you supported students through this challenging school year. Enjoy your summer!

Google Forms for Parents (New School Year Ideas)

I have followed Kasey Bell's Shake Up Learning blog for years, and just started listening to her podcast. One of her latest, 30 Ways to Use Google Forms in the Classroom, reminded me of just how many ways there are to use this great Google tool. I particularly liked two for the start of the year:

#10 Parent Information. Once I went paperless for my high school syllabus, I began asking for electronic acknowledgement from parents. Normally parents return a sheet at the end of a big packet of paper with a signature, but students were always losing these AND I seldom got them all back. By emailing all parents the form with the syllabus link embedded on top, I saved paper and had more parents engaged with the syllabi than before because they could access it from their phone. Click here to view (and here to make a copy of) my template if it helps!

A great idea from the podcast for those working on GRADE LEVEL TEAMS was to send one form with a parent questionnaire for the group and share the spreadsheet, saving parents from having to fill out the same information multiple times.

#23 The Parent/Guardian Communication Log. While I used a spreadsheet for this, not everyone is proficient in Google sheets, making this a great "access anywhere" alternative. I also like that it can automatically collect the date, remind me to include parent information (i.e. was it Mom or Dad!), and lots of open space to summarize our communication. I also like that in the results, I can print each "individual response" sheet to share with administration if needed for an office referral.

There are so many great ideas... let us know which one is your favorite in the comments!😁

-Jessica Gillespie