**Any mention of Google Docs means them being used as screen share during Zoom—what was projected in class—NOT for any student editing.**

This year, I’m pushing the boundaries of streamlining teaching. For years, my students have used one rubric to self-assess one grade at the end of a term. Google Docs have always been my in-class-go-to for organization and providing input, but a few updates have resulted in magic…

Google Docs
My modus operandī has been to use a different Doc for each class section containing in-class texts (i.e. all Write & Discuss), each with a companion Doc for anything that needs to be printed, an “All-Class Text” Doc for when all classes are reading the same Latin, a Doc for “Do Nows/Bell Ringers,” and a Doc for planning (i.e. agenda). That’s pretty organized, but still comes to 10-12 Docs the whole year, with 5-6 tabs open each day.

Goodbye!

All of that has now become a single Doc I call “hodiē (today).” It covers all needs for all classes, from Do Now to Write & Discuss, and any planned resources linked in an agenda. It has everything I need for class in one tab. Instead of multiple docs for each class section, I can just “ctrl + enter” to start a new page, label it for the specific class, and be done. Voilà! It sounds like something that could get outta control real fast, but the Doc is kept organized with bookmarks, links to those bookmarks, and reverse order (i.e. most recent content will be at the top):

See how the Doc looks like in this video I just made, walking you through how I’ve set it up and plan to use it.

Google Classroom Assignment & Form
I’ve written how I’m using a Google Form for weekly scores. Students fill out the same Form each week. There’s no copying, or me creating a new Form. I’m assigning this in a Google Classroom, but it’s just a placeholder since I’m really checking the Form spreadsheet, putting a score into PowerTeacher. That is, I don’t use the “turn-in” or grading features of Classroom. Instead, Classroom is a handy place for students to access all their work, and for Latin class, it’s the same Form link each week. By not really paying attention to the Classroom grading features, I can reuse the same assignment over and over. Once the week is done, I can just edit the exact same Assignment and push back the date:

Editing the Google Assignment will keep the Classroom stream super clean (i.e. instead of new weekly assignments, there’s just the same assignment re-posted weekly). The combination of all these streamlined practices should keep the focus on what students really need, anyway…

…input & interaction.