Friday, August 14, 2020

Special Area Google Classroom Set up

This past spring was a surprise and we as teachers did our best to pivot quickly to distance learning. It wasn't pretty and at my school we had some participation in Specials to start which quickly fell off a cliff. Partly because families were overwhelmed and partly because we were not well-organized (which made it more overwhelming!)

We are starting back this school year virtually and we don't know when we'll be back in the classroom. The way our schedule is currently set up we will only be doing asynchronous pre-recorded lessons. The students have 30 minutes of Specials in their daily schedule. It's not ideal but there are some schools where they aren't having Specials at all so I'm happy with what we've got. 

That being said, however, I don't want to see the same levels of participation so our team decided that we should house our Special Area lessons all in one place. This way students only have to check one place to see what are they supposed to be working on that day.





School doesn't start for another week and a half so this is all still in process so I'll keep you updated on how it all works out as we add more and the students get in there and start working.  And if you're not an elementary teacher then I recommend THIS VIDEO for how to organize your classwork.  I'd also love to what your schedule is going to look like this year and how you plan on organizing and posting work for students! Share in the comments below!

5 comments:

  1. Hi, we are in the middle of deciding what will be the best and most effective way to go with Google Classroom and this is helpful. Regarding the email notifications, are you receiving all of them, including those from other topics (Special areas)? I am curious to know how are you managing this? It felt a little overwhelming for me back in the spring.

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    1. Yes, the one drawback is that I do see emails for the other Special Area teachers' posts. My inbox goes a little nuts every afternoon as kids sign in to do their daily specials work. Right now I just wait until the end of the school day and then delete them en masse. You can also set up a rule in Outlook that automatically deletes or moves emails not for you into a different folder so you don't have to see them. I just set up my rules to delete anything that says another special area like Art and commented on. If it works I can post another video on how to set it up!

      Thanks for reading the blog!

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    2. Thank you. There is a way to filtering those but I haven't make it to work for me. Learning here...

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