As we are nearing the end of the semester for many schools, many students can get tripped up as they are experiencing a lot of tasks all due at the same time. Making sure that students have easy and quick access to a list of tasks they are supposed to be completing should be key for all teachers. Make sure they have one easy place to go to find what is expected of them in order to be successful can make it so all students can better succeed. The more energy a student has to expel in order to find out what they have to do and when, the more likely students will run into an issue and often will forget or just miss something.

Whether you are using Google Classroom or Canvas, you can make things easier on students by having the first/top section be the place they need to look to know what is expected of them. Placing a single file in that section that has all of the assignments or tasks that are due. What makes this even easier for you to do is the new Building Blocks feature of Google Docs. You can easily use one of the templates for the Building Blocks to create a quick table that includes the name of the tasks, the descriptions or a breakdown of the larger tasks, due dates, and more for each assignment. Students can copy whatever you add to this document to their own copy so they can write down notes or even add checkboxes so they can more easily track what they have left to do.

A couple things to go further with this is if you knew all of the main tasks and assignments for a long period of time ahead of time, you could even create a copy for each student from the start in Google Classroom or Canvas, then you have access to that from the start. You could even share your copy with parents/guardians so they can easily see what is coming up so they can better support their students. While many gradebook such as Infinite Campus or PowerSchool can show all assignments, these programs are not always as accessible for students and parents/guardians, when a Google Doc can be.

Watch the following video to see how you could easily set this up to make things much easier for students to have clarity around what they need to be doing.