GATE Students Loving Google Classroom

In the last few weeks, GATE teachers and students have been exploring/implementing Google Classroom. Classroom is a virtual environment that is designed to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly, including time-saving features like the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google document for each student. It also creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student to help keep everyone organized. Students can keep track of what’s due on the Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades right in Classroom. Classroom features include Announcement and Question posts as well. This gives students a platform to publish their responses or ideas as well as a way for teachers to collect formative assessment data that will help focus instruction.

Stephanie Woodard, GATE teacher at ACFT and Mullendore, dove into Classroom by having her scholars post responses to questions about the multiple structures of poetry they have been studying. She recently posted a poetry Assignment that requires scholars to create poems using 3 structures of their choosing. Woodard comments, “I love Google Classroom because it allows me to extend my G.A.T.E. classroom beyond the two hours that I see my scholars each week. They have all been excited about the communication and the extension of their learning as well.”