Its time to cleanup your google classroom and begin with new one for the next school year. We are now at the end of the academic year and everyone will be wondering how to cleanup or close their digital classroom.
So, let us see, what are the steps to cleanup and some useful tips you must consider before you cleanup or archive the classroom.
Points to remember before you archive or cleanup your digital classroom.
1) Take time to Reflect :
Just take some time to look through your Google Classroom assignments, their coordinating folders in Google Drive, and calendar. Just what went on well and what dint work so well, what can be done differently next year, so that we don’t repeat the same mistake the next time, reflection is the key for our growth and for the students.
2) Review and return :
Check your “To Review” in Google Classroom to see if any of your work need to be reviewed, or graded, or returned. By this, you can view all the pending works at the same time. You can open up each assignment individually if you have several assignments left to grade and return. You can also click on the three dots to “mark as reviewed,” by doing this you can move the assignments to reviewed tab.
3) Move old class folders to drive :
For each class you create in Google Classroom, a folder gets created in your Google Drive automatically where all of the resources, assignments, documents and other files are stored. You may create a New Folder and save them in that, so that it can be used whenever required in future. You also can create master folders for each school year, like “2020-2021” and so on.
4) Remove old class calendars :
When a classroom is created and some assignments are due, it is automatically shown in Google calendar of the class. However, during the end of the year, you don’t really need the calendar showing up amymore. We can remove the calendars of old class in two types :
- Hiding from the list : By doing this we can actually hide the calendar from showing up.
- Delete or remove permanently: You can go to the settings and delete the calendar of that particular class permanently.
5) Remove old class files from “Shared with me” in Drive :
When files are shared in the Classroom as resources or assignment, sometimes the files will also show up in the “Shared with me” area of your Google Drive. If you have a lots of students and lot of assignments will show up in “Shared with me”.
The files shared are of two types:
- When students submit the assignments, you become the owner of the file (so make sure that you have returned all the assignments to your students) and you can delete the file.
- When someone shares files or documents with you, you are not the owner of the file, so if you delete the file, it simply removes from the “shared with me” list. The file will still be in the classroom folder, even if it removed or deleted.
Now let us see the ways to archive the class, you can use anyone of the method to prepare for the new class:
1) By Un-enrolling the students
Another possible way to cleanup your classroom is to remove students from the old class. You can choose this if you prefer that the students alone will be changed and all the other things remains to be same.
But there is the possibility of the new students to view the resources and assignments that you have already posted for the old students.
Steps to Un-enroll the students from old class:
- Go to the People
- Selected students section and choose all students.
- Click Action button and choose Remove from the drop-down.
2) By making a copy of the classroom
You can make a copy of the old classroom, when you do so you can see that there are no students and staff in that new classroom, but all the resources and assignments that you posted in the old classroom are saved as drafts which you can edit and repost or reschedule it again. This saves much of your time, so that you need not again create or upload it.
My advice will be, if you are going to handle the same subject and grade, would be to make a copy of the classroom so that you can reuse the same class year after year.
I have shown step-by-step direction on how to archive the classroom in my youtube video, you can click on to the link to watch it.
Steps to make a copy of a class:
- In the Google Classroom homepage
- click on the three dots on the class card, then choose “copy” and rename it accordingly.
3) By Archiving the old classes
The Last method to cleanup classroom is to archive you class. By doing this is it removes the class from main page. If freezes the class and no one can make any change in it. But, important thing is that, it allows you to copy and reuse the old resources and assignments from the archived class in your new class.
This might be the best way when you are done with a class, and it can be accessed and restored if needed.
Steps to archive a class:
- In the Google Classroom homepage
- click on the three dots on the class card, then choose “Archive.”
Steps to access or restore the old class:
- Go to your main menu (three lines) and scroll down to the bottom
- Select “Archive” to see your archived classes.
- You can also copy, restore, or delete them from here.
So, that’s it, but still there are multiple ways to do almost everything, but if you have any other best way to archive the class, tell me in the comments, I would love to learn more new things.