Managing a virtual school is so much easier if all instructions to pupils are given through one central channel
Avoid email as much as possible when setting work for pupils. Eg when organising a whole school assembly, don't send an email to all students containing the URL of the live stream - instead, post the link in a whole-school class in Classroom, or share it with form tutors who can add it to their own Classroom pages
At Cothill we use CLASS, SUBJECT, TEACHER INITIALS. See guidelines here
I would NOT create new classes every term - it's not necessary
Whatever method you use, keep it consistent
This one single feature saves a huge amount of time. It makes a copy of the worksheet for every student automatically, AND adds the student's name to the title, making marking and assessment so much easier. You can see what this option looks like here
It gives that personal connection that's missing from face-to-face class time
It helps us to communicate more clearly with facial expressions, body language and intonation
It's quick and easy using Screencastify - see here
Go to Settings / General / Stream and select "Only teachers can post or comment"
This can be relaxed after the first couple of weeks, and needs to be managed carefully to ensure pupils stay on track
If the children can't see details and attachments in the Stream, they will likely miss them in the assignment. Also ensure the option to "show attachments and details" is set to ON for this reason
Good Practice guidelines are shown here
A number of schools are using this and finding it works really well
This video may prove helpful showing how easy this is for students
That Google Drive folder is fundamental to all permissions/visibility working correctly, so if you go in there and start moving things around, it can cause real problems. As a teacher, you can do everything you need to do from within Google Classroom
Set the work to appear at the start of the lesson. If you set it to appear beforehand, children will start early!
This will allow you to plan lessons far in advance, should you wish. And try to remain consistent - eg "deadline for all of tomorrow's lessons must be 6pm the night before"
Don't ever ask children to print our their work at home. Printing is not necessary, and will open a can of worms.
Classsroom can (and should) work with no parental input required at home
If you have a worksheet with questions, simply scan it in, make it the background of Google Slide, and get children to label it or fill in the answers using simple textboxes. No printing required!
Children can submit HANDWRITTEN drawings and work directly to their teacher(s) via Classroom. See video guides here
Always set Google Docs / Sheets / Slides, otherwise children won't be able to edit / submit
So easy to save any Word doc as a Google Doc - just right click in Drive and "open with". Save it as a Doc and submit to Classroom
You can use the same post across multiple classes very quickly, from any time in the past, or from any previous class
Click here to learn how - it's very easy!
So easy to do and gives real value to the virtual school, as students can always go back and see what they missed
These are uncharted waters and we don't yet know how well live lessons will work with lots of pupils taking part all at the same time in far flung corners of the world. It's therefore sensible for teachers to have a regular assignment at the ready which can be pushed out to the Classroom feed at a moment's notice, just in case the 'live' lesson attempt goes horrbily wrong. Could simply be a relevant Youtube clip with some questions, for example
Otherwise children may not be able to view, stopping the assignment right in its tracks
Click here to learn how - it's very easy!
Children have to ACCEPT a class invitation, they can't be force-added. The fewer classes we ask them to join, the better, otherwise they will drown in all the admin. Keep things simple, consolidate classes, and it works much better
As an example, we have a "Whole School" class set up at Cothill, used for multiple different questions/tasks. Anyone wanting to ask something of all pupils in the school is simply invited as a co-teacher, and given access. Managing the assignments from the teacher p.o.v is easy, and the pupils like it as there's only ONE whole school class to join, which is used for many different assignments