GC at the end of the Year
The school year is almost over. So now what do you do with your classroom? You'll want to start fresh without students and with assignments for next year. Here is how to do that.
- Grade and/or return all work (or close assignments)
Go to your To Do list (under the horizontal menu at the left).
You can filter by one class at a time or all of the classes together.
Tip: hold down the CTRL key when you click on an assignment in a new Tab (so you stay on the To-Do list) if you want to see the assignment and check for any last-minute submissions.
If you want to close the assignment, click on the 3 dots at the side and Mark as Reviewed.
2. Take time to reflect.
Before you put away your classroom for the summer, it's a good time to review what you've done. What's worked? What needs to be tweaked? What do you want to discard? We ask students to reflect - now it's your turn!
3. Do NOT delete the Classroom folder.
Don't delete the folder in your drive! You have unlimited space in your Google Drive and there's no space issue.
To organize old Classroom folders, you can create a separate folder for this year's classes (name it with the year) and click and drag those folders into it.
If you have a collection of exemplars you want to share with next year's students, you can save those in a separate folder.
4. Do you want students to have access to their work and your assignments?
If you want students to be able to access their work - don't remove them from the class. Even when you archive, they will still be able to go back to your Google Classroom if you leave them enrolled (on the People tab).
If you don't want students accessing work, go to the People tab and remove them from the class. Their work will remain in the folder for that classroom and you will still have access but they won't. They should still have their copy of anything they submitted to you in their Drive.
5. Delete the class Calendar
Either delete (or uncheck it) in the calendar listing, which will hide it from view. If you plan to delete, you can Print your calendar or save as a .pdf before deleting. To delete the calendar, go to the calendar and find the one for your class. Click the 3 dots next to that calendar, click Settings and sharing, scroll down to Delete it.
6. OPTIONAL: Copy your class for next year.
Go back to the class tile in the Archive and click on Copy. It will create a copy that you can rename for the current year. You will see that there are no students, so you can start fresh. You will also see that all activity in Classwork is now in Draft mode so that you can choose to edit it, delete it or assign it at the right time.
7. Archive old classes
Archive by clicking on the horizontal menu at the top left, going to the class tile, then clicking on the 3 dots at the top right and choosing Archive. Click Archive again, to confirm. This will send your classroom to the Archive section. That can be accessed by clicking back in the horizontal menu and going to the bottom of the list. You can even restore your class if you need to. (You can also copy Archived classes, too).
8. You can Reuse assignments from Archived classes.
You can use the Reuse Post feature from a current class to copy something in an Archived class. Leave the box that says "Create new copies of all attachments" so you don't have confusion with documents of the same name.
It's better to attach templates and files from a separate folder on your Google Drive, outside of that Classroom.
9. Clean up your Google Drive.
Now is a good time to sort through, create a folder for your own templates, rubrics, and work. You can also create a folder of exemplars and anchor papers. It's up to you if you want to save other student work and will depend on your school's requirements for saving assignments. See Google Drive for suggestions.
Back to Google Classroom
More Resources
How-To Articles
Matt Miller of Ditch that Textbook has an infographic and details on what you can do, in this post: https://ditchthattextbook.com/google-classroom-cleanup/
Kacey Bell of Shake Up Learning also has advice on her podcast/page at: https://shakeuplearning.com/blog/google-classroom-cleanup-tips-for-the-end-of-the-year/
Alice Keeler about Google Classroom: Archive Your Class for the Summer: https://alicekeeler.com/2018/05/25/google-classroom-archive-class/
6 End-Of-Year Google Classroom Clean-up Tips - Eric Curtis from Control Alt Achieve
Google Support Articles
Archive or delete a class - Google Classroom Help Article
Copy a Google Class - Google Help Article - for Classroom assignments you will use again (Items specific to the original class, such as posts to the Stream page, don’t copy.)