How I Use Google Classroom
Okay, I'll start this week's post with a couple off-topic items. First, since I'm living off of caffeine right now, this meme made me laugh.
Next, an update on our basketball season. We got 2nd at our League Tournament last weekend, which isn't what we wanted but is still great for our program. The girls played really well the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters, but we didn't start the game well enough to win. After that Championship Game on Saturday, we played the #4 ranked team in 2A on Tuesday (we were ranked #8). We bounced back with little practice and rest and won 50-44, moving us up to 3rd place in 2A. We're down to the final stretch of games as we fight for a second seed in the Sub-State tournament. The first seed will be locked up by defending State Champ, Central Plains, but we want our chance to play them so it's all hands on deck the rest of February.
Okay, let's move on to today's topic and that is, how I use Google Classroom. Every teacher uses G.C. (my abbreviation for the rest of this post) differently and that's because of how well G.C. can be adapted to fit multiple teaching styles. I'll start with a screenshot of one of my G.C. classes.
As you can see, I use G.C. as a running "calendar" of what we have done. With so many students (and myself) gone for sports at least once a week, I need a way to easily distribute the information I taught that day as well as any worksheets or practice we did along with it. Students have also found this useful in looking back at old material when studying for tests. Each day, I post a PDF file of the notes I gave over OneNote. I use OneNote because I teach over my personal Surface Laptop which has a great pen feature for note-taking, or in this case, note-giving. If you're interested in more information about OneNote, click here, or if you already use OneNote, and want to know how to export your pages as PDF's, click here. Anyway, here is an example of a PDF I exported from Friday.
Absent students are expected to copy the notes from the day, and access the worksheet or practice also linked. This cuts back on e-mails asking what we did each day a student was gone, and also allows me to be more strict in enforcing our absent work policy. The excuse, "I didn't know what we missed" doesn't work because it's always on the G.C. Also, this time of year I'm a little scatter brained and I've had trouble in the past with forgetting to get students the work they missed when they get back to school. This strategy solves that problem as well.
I know many teachers use more of Google Classroom's features such as quizzes, polls, and discussions. But in my math classroom, I've found this approach keeps myself and my students much more organized. And in my opinion, organization is a crucial piece to running a successful classroom.
I hope you got some ideas of your own on how you can use G.C. in your own classroom!
Okay, let's move on to today's topic and that is, how I use Google Classroom. Every teacher uses G.C. (my abbreviation for the rest of this post) differently and that's because of how well G.C. can be adapted to fit multiple teaching styles. I'll start with a screenshot of one of my G.C. classes.
As you can see, I use G.C. as a running "calendar" of what we have done. With so many students (and myself) gone for sports at least once a week, I need a way to easily distribute the information I taught that day as well as any worksheets or practice we did along with it. Students have also found this useful in looking back at old material when studying for tests. Each day, I post a PDF file of the notes I gave over OneNote. I use OneNote because I teach over my personal Surface Laptop which has a great pen feature for note-taking, or in this case, note-giving. If you're interested in more information about OneNote, click here, or if you already use OneNote, and want to know how to export your pages as PDF's, click here. Anyway, here is an example of a PDF I exported from Friday.
Absent students are expected to copy the notes from the day, and access the worksheet or practice also linked. This cuts back on e-mails asking what we did each day a student was gone, and also allows me to be more strict in enforcing our absent work policy. The excuse, "I didn't know what we missed" doesn't work because it's always on the G.C. Also, this time of year I'm a little scatter brained and I've had trouble in the past with forgetting to get students the work they missed when they get back to school. This strategy solves that problem as well.
I know many teachers use more of Google Classroom's features such as quizzes, polls, and discussions. But in my math classroom, I've found this approach keeps myself and my students much more organized. And in my opinion, organization is a crucial piece to running a successful classroom.
I hope you got some ideas of your own on how you can use G.C. in your own classroom!
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