How Google Classroom Has Changed My Teaching

Hey everyone!

This year I'm fortunate enough to have 1:1 Chromebooks in my classroom. The second week of school they were all ready to go and I jumped into Google Classroom, something I dabbled with last year. It has completely changed my teaching and my classroom.

I set up a main Google Classroom (I'll call it GC from here on out) for my class. I post assignments in there for writing, science, and social studies. I've also posted announcements or links I want students to go to. I used to make a KWL chart, but now they do that on GC.

Then I realized I could change my reading time by also setting up a GC for each of my reading groups. Game changer! I post questions there and we discuss questions. Sometimes they answer them in my guided reading groups. If they don't finish, they can do this at their desk. Oh and let me say, my students chose the names for their reading groups! I just added the graphic at the top lol.


I'm spending less time at copy machines now. In fact, I'm only there for copying homework and for a few other things. I don't have stacks of papers in my class now, just their math tests and some writing. Everything else goes in GC.

I love the fact that I can create one document and with one click of a button, my students all have copies. I love that I can see in live time what they are working on and add comments to their work. That their classmates can add comments. I can quickly see who is done or not done. I can post video links, images, docs, etc.



My students are getting much better at typing. I love that they are becoming so independent and GC is helping with that.

To my amazement, one of my students was home sick, but still did the assignment because it was up in GC. Also the one day I was out sick, I posted almost the whole day's work in GC and the kids were able to run the day smoothly. I could even pop in and see what they were doing.

My plan is to do some blog posts here about some tech tips. Let me know if you have any tips you want to see.


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