CREATING A CLASS WEBSITE WITH GOOGLE SITES

New school year….. new classroom website! Creating a classroom website last school year was hands down one of the best decisions I made over the course of the school year. Our classroom website was the go to place for all information. It helped keep my information organized and eliminated a TON of parent questions. What teacher wouldn’t love that? I loved it so much that I gave my site a major facelift for this school year.

I love using Google Sites to build my classroom website. Google Sites is easy to use and it’s free. You don’t have to have a background in design to create a website that will work for you and your class. In this post I’ll be sharing the top three features I love to have on my class website each year, sharing the features of my Bright and Airy Google Sites Bundles, and sharing some free Google Site buttons with you.

CLASS CALENDAR

I love hosting my class calendar on my class website. This allows parents to be able to have access to important dates with ease. My class calendar includes important school-wide dates like school closure and holiday dates, grade level dates like back to school night and parent-teacher conference dates and class specific dates like birthday celebrations, mystery reader dates, and class presentation dates. I love using Google Slides to create my class calendar. Using google slides allows me to make changes to our calendar which is automatically updated on the website in real time. Using Google Slides also allows me to embed the calendar directly into the website with ease.

EMAIL ARCHIVES

I love using my class website to archive parent emails. My school uses email communication as the main form of communication with parents. With so many emails being sent to parents from so many constituents, it can be difficult for parents to keep up with all of the information. Archiving important emails on our classroom website allows parents to go back and find information when they need access to it. I like to archive my bi-weekly class news and updates on the website by adding the text to a Google Docs and linking the information to the class website.

SIGN UP FORMS

Your Google Sites class website is a great place to store all sign up forms that parents will need throughout the year. This includes parent-teacher conference forms, parent volunteer sign up forms, and so much more. Having all of your sign up forms in one place makes it easier for parents to find and complete all of the forms they need throughout the year. Here are a list of some of the sign up forms I list on my class website:

• Parent-Teacher Conference Sign Up Forms

• Parent Volunteer Sign Up Form

• Mystery Reader Sign Up Form

I like to use Google Forms and Sign Up Genius’ free forms to create my sign up forms and link them to a custom made button on my website.

GOOGLE SITES BUNDLE

Looking for more to spice up your classroom website, check out the Editable Bright and Airy Google Sites bundle.

What You’ll Get:

• Pre-made Site headers

• Pre-made Site buttons

• Editable document to create your own custom Sites headers

• Editable document to create your own custom Sites buttons

• Editable school calendar

• Tutorial on editing Sites headers

• Tutorial on adding headers and buttons to Google Sites

• Access to a sample Google Sites

As promised you can grab my Google Sites buttons freebie by clicking here. You can purchase the Editable Google Sites bundle by clicking on the button below. I hope you found this tutorial and information helpful. If you have any more questions about Google Sites or if you have any other tips and tricks feel free to leave a comment below.