12 Teacher Organization Hacks for the Virtual and Hybrid Classroom
Let’s face it, teaching in 2020-2021 has been (and will continue to be) unlike any other. What works for the in-person classroom may not always translate well to the digital or hybrid classroom — especially when it comes to organization.
Luckily, I’ve collaborated with some of my favorite tech-savvy English teachers to bring you 12 organization tips to help you organize your digital classroom routines, streamline your feedback system, rock your digital lesson plans and more.
Organize Your Digital Classroom Routines 🖥️
Tip #1: Create Daily Agenda Google Slides
For me personally, using Google Slides to create daily/weekly agendas has been the real MVP of my digital teaching life. The routine began a few years ago as a way for me to organize lesson materials and make it easier for students to access information they may have missed. When things shifted online, the agenda slides became an even more essential organizational tool. Not only do my students benefit from having everything outlined in one convenient location, but it’s also helped me keep track of my daily lesson plans and other resources students may need that day.
Since I’m currently teaching virtually, I begin each class period by reviewing the agenda slides on screen. This also makes it super easy to share any important links, such as a collaborative Jamboard or breakout room notetaker, with students during our session. I also keep the slides posted in an easily accessible location on our LMS (previously Google Classroom, but now Schoology) for students to reference later.
If your digital lesson organization could use a little TLC, Google Slides may be just what you need. Click here to view my growing collection of daily agenda slides. You can also learn more about my breakout room note takers, another invaluable organizational tool, and grab some FREE collaborative templates here and here.
Tip #2: Use Google Sites as a CLASSROOM Hub
When thinking about the daunting task of organizing a digital classroom and anticipating what will be needed when and if instruction “pivots” to a hybrid model can feel painfully overwhelming. Amanda from Mud and Ink Teaching may have found an organizational life saving hack for you: embrace the power of Google Sites to set up your digital classroom.
In Amanda’s blog post, she gives a behind the scenes tour of her own classroom Google Site and breaks down the most useful features that are helping right now. Google Sites is not only functional, but it’s visually appealing to kids. Imagine how much more interesting it would be to look at the embedded version of your Google Slide on a website instead of as a tiny thumbnail listed on Google Classroom!
Amanda’s Google Site is treated as the instructional hub of the classroom and also shows how, then, Google Classroom is used more as a “turn in bin” rather than the primary mode of instruction. Check out this idea and her sample over on her website!
Tip 3: Utilize the Bookmarks Bar
Who else misses a classroom where organization looks like labeling notebooks, maximizing wall space, or color-coding systems--for both you and your students? In an online setting, navigating a school website, LMS, learning platforms, class resources, and six online classes per day can leave any teacher or student feeling overwhelmed. With so many shifts over the summer, Staci from Donut Lovin’ Teacher needed to organize her digital classroom space by being prepared with links to literally ‘all the things.’ Cue the bookmarks bar.
Ok, this likely isn’t revolutionary for you…but have you shared this organizational tip with your students? Staci found herself spending so much time showing students how to get to certain sites or documents over and over again. She decided that to better utilize time with her students, she needed to teach them how to be more organized in a digital space. Teaching students how to utilize the bookmarks bar to organize websites and assignments is comparable to teaching students how to organize a notebook or binder. Plus, as an English teacher, Staci finds that while students are working on a writing piece, they are often on the same document for several days. You can use this Bookmarks Bar Quick Guide as a resource with your students or learn how to get fancy in your teacher Bookmarks Bar.
Tip #4: Create a Class Calendar Google Doc
Christina, The Daring English Teacher, uses a hyperlinked Google Doc as a class calendar to help her students and parents stay informed and organized. The Google Doc class calendar is organized by week and includes three distinct columns to keep everything organized: date, classwork, homework.
Christina links any important assignments, class readings, or informational websites to the class calendar so students can easily see what is planned for the day or what they missed. During live instruction, she projects the class calendar on the overhead as students walk in.
Because of the weekly nature of the calendar, students who missed the previous day can easily and quickly see what they missed.
Another great benefit of using a Google Doc as a class calendar is that it helps make planning for the next year a breeze.
Tip #5: Use Collaborative Boards for Engagement
Jenna Copper, @DrJennaCopper, loves using collaborative boards as a way to plan and pace her lessons for virtual learning. In a digital classroom, collaboration is as easy as a think, pair, share. However, in the virtual classroom, Jenna had to get a little more creative to plan intentional sharing opportunities.
That’s when Jenna started creating collaborative lesson markers throughout her lesson plan. Using Padlet or a shared Google Slides, these students can paste open-ended responses, images, and ideas so that everyone in class and at home can share at once. Now, whenever her class is working on a project, activity, or lesson, Jenna sets up a collaborative board to share their individual work.
Collaborative boards are not only a great way to add accountability and increase engagement, but they also provide a way for the teacher to track participation without requiring students to have cameras on. This is also a great way for Jenna to structure her virtual lessons. She plans the collaborative activities on intervals throughout the lesson. For more information about collaborative boards, check out her blog post here.
Organize Your Feedback System 💭
Tip #6: Schedule Virtual Conferences with Google Docs
Ashley Bible at Building Book Love was surprised to find that one of her favorite teaching strategies actually works better virtually than in person. One of the key elements of her Fast and Focused Feedback method is conducting mini writing conferences. In normal times, she does this with revision stations (get your FREE station download here!), but during remote and hybrid learning, she had to make a new plan.
Though there are several scheduling tools out here, she took the keep-it-simple-silly approach and quickly created a shared document with 5 minute time slots in one column and “sign up here” in the other. Using this shared writing conference doc, students signed up for a time slot then added a reminder on their phone.
On writing conference day, Ashley kept her Zoom session open as individual students popped in and out of their appointments. Students shared their essays from their screen and received fast but invaluable one-on-one revision feedback. Though she predicted a technology disaster, virtual writing conferences turned out SO MUCH BETTER than she could have hoped for!
Tip #7: Organize Your Google Classroom Comments by Number
The best thing Emily Aierstok from Read it. Write it. Learn it. ever did for herself is number her comments in the Google Classroom Comment bank. The comment bank in Google Classroom has a recall feature that recognizes parts of teacher comments to make pulling up the entire comment much faster.
Emily tested out the system and realized that the comment bank will also recall comments based on numbers alone. For example, if Emily numbered a comment with a 12, as soon as she types in the number, the entire comment will pop up and Emily can add the comment to a student’s Google Doc with ease. The best part? It saves TONS of grading time.
Since that discovery, Emily decided to create a master list of comments (she’s up to 54 in all), number them, and as she grades, she simply types in the number, the comment pops up, and she adds fast feedback to any Google Doc!
You can read more about how Emily organizes her comment bank to save grading time here.
Organize Your Digital Lesson Plans 📋
Tip #8: Keep a Digital Planner with Planboard
Whether you’re teaching with a new hybrid or virtual schedule or simply trying to keep different class periods straight, it can be difficult to organize your lesson plans in one easily accessible spot. If your plans currently exist in various docs, sheets, and paper planners, but you’d like to consolidate them to one tab, then check out the website Planboard. Abby from Write on With Miss G loves this planning tool because it is intuitive, user-friendly, and completely free.
With Planboard, you can create time-saving templates so that you’re not starting from scratch every time you sit down to plan. You can also load your standards or learning targets at the beginning of the year so all you have to do is select them from a drop-down menu. Planboard will even keep track of the standards you’ve covered throughout the year! If you don’t absolutely LOVE your curren lesson planning methods, then Planboard is worth checking out.
To read more about Planboard and Abby’s other favorite productivity apps, check out this blog post.
Tip #9: Create Long-Term digital Plans
Tanesha, over at Tanesha B. Forman, recently transitioned to an administrator role in her school. She’s worked to help the teachers she supports to build their lesson planning and organization skills by creating digital long term plans.
The long-term digital plans help teachers frame each unit and the significant parts of their classrooms’ learning cycle. Teachers love the ability to view their year and then zoom in on each instructional unit. Additionally, co-teachers can efficiently share plans, and grade-level teams can view each other’s lessons to discuss vertical alignment. For instructional coaches and assistant principals, this structure provides access to lesson materials if a teacher has an emergency and needs to be out. Teachers can adjust the template to work for their class structure, and the templates are housed on the school hub. It’s a win for everyone! See examples here!
Organize Your Personal & Professional Life 📁
Tip #10: Focus on Quality OVER Quantity
This year, Lauralee from Language Arts Classroom is focusing on staying healthy, physically and mentally. That focus very much leads to organizing in a new way.
One, this year she acknowledges that digital is the preferred learning method. Students and teachers should not be passing papers back and forth, and with so many online learners, physical activities are not feasible. She began organizing her digital space to reflect that switch. As she organizes (often deleting less than stellar lessons!), she has focused her attention on quality over quantity.
Next, she prioritizes organizing herself. After teaching for a few weeks, she found her rhythm:
She puts five masks in her car on Sunday night, one for every day of the week.
In her desk, she stocks food for snacks. She only grabs lunch in the morning.
She leaves work at school and gets a solid night of sleep.
This year brought many different changes, and organizing her personal and professional habits helped Lauralee.
Tip #11: Adopt a File Organization System
Staci Lamb from The Engaging Station has finally accepted two truths about herself: 1) she is a procrastinator and always will be a procrastinator and 2) organization brings her peace.
To help her not be a totally disorganized procrastinator, she is a huge fan of checklists and file organization.
Every day, she makes a daily to-do checklist for herself, whether it be on paper or digital. A checked-off item can be extremely satisfying, and you can grab a free digital checklist template here.
Another way that Staci stays organized is keeping her files, whether in her physical filing cabinet or digital platform, organized by color and content.
For her filing cabinet, she started using these labels years ago and has never looked back.
Digitally, she organizes her files by Class > Unit > Lesson Plans. Inside of the lesson plan folder, she organizes it into two additional folders: Resources and PowerPoints.
Tip #12: Use Google Forms to Track Parent/Guardian Contacts
Inboxes seem to be overflowing more than ever! If your inbox is full of parent-teacher communication, and trying to track all of the touchpoints is getting cumbersome, Melissa from Reading and Writing Haven has a practical solution.
Create a Google Form that you fill out every time you touch base with a parent or guardian. It can be simple and quick to fill out, even as you are on the phone or as soon as you finish an email. Taking the extra 30 seconds to enter details about the contact in a form will help you to track how many times you’ve touched base with a family and what the conversations were about.
At any point, you can export Google Form results into an excel spreadsheet. From there, you can filter for student names, which will cause all of the contacts you’ve made for one student to show up together.
Streamlining this communication makes it less stressful to conduct parent-teacher conferences. Plus, you’ll have organized evidence of communication to show your evaluator. And, you won’t have to spend hours searching your sent folder to track down details.
Melissa has written about a handful of other digital organization tips for teachers on her blog. Find a free copy of this Google Forms parent/guardian contact in her blog post: Organize online learning to simplify your teaching life.
