In part 4 of our All About Google Classroom Series, we are going to be covering the People Section of Google Classroom and some of its key features!
The People Section in Google Classroom is broken into two main parts: Teachers and Students. First, we are going to look at the Teacher section. In the teacher section, you will see your name there. You are the there because you are the teacher of the class. You will notice that there is a silhouette with a plus (+) sign next to it in the top right-hand side. Clicking on that will enable you to add co-teachers to your Google Classroom. To add a co-teacher, simply click on the silhouette, type in the teachers name or email address. If your district has the global address book set up, typing in the person’s name will work. If not, you can type in their email address. (Note: You can add more that one co-teacher to your classroom). After you have done so, click on invite in the bottom right-hand corner. Note that teachers you add to your class can do everything you can except delete the class. This is great for rotations within the same site or grade level, collaboration with other classes on campus or even at different sites.
Next, lets move to the Students Section. Here, you will see a list of all of the students that are enrolled in your class. You can sort them alphabetically by either first or last name. If you want to add students to your class, you will follow the same process we did to add teachers to the class. You will notice that each student has a check box next to them. Checking that box will enable the Actions dropdown. With students, there are three actions: email, remove, and mute. Choosing email simply allows you to email that student(s). Choosing remove will delete that student(s) from your class. Choosing mute will restrict that student(s) from commenting on posts made by either you or their classmates in Google Classroom.
You will also see next to each student the label Invite Guardians. Here, you can type in the student’s guardian email address. By inviting guardians, they can receive Guardian Summaries. With Guardian Summaries, guardians will be able to review:
When you invite guardians, they will receive and email invitation and they can choose to receive either daily or weekly summaries. (Note: You can invite more than one guardian per student.) Learn more about guardian summaries here.
Finally, you will notice a vertical ellipses next to each student and co-teacher in Google Classroom. Clicking on this allows you to email that teacher or student.
That does it for the People Section of Google Classroom. In our next post, we will be diving into the Grades Section of Google Classroom.