Currently, a teacher or school administrator can invite a guardian, typically a parent, to receive email summaries about their student’s work in class. These email summaries include a rundown of missing work, upcoming work and class activities, such as recently posted announcements or assignments in Google Classroom. 

Going forward, guardian email summaries will now include links that let guardians preview their student's Classwork pages, including assigned work and attachments provided by the teacher. With this update, guardians can stay up-to-date with what their students are learning. Guardians will not be able to see their student’s grades or submissions, class communication, or other students’ work. Guardians can easily access this page directly from the Classroom email summaries or from the link shared by teachers. 

We recently introduced the ability to import data, such as student rosters, co-teachers and grading categories, from your Student Information System (SIS) to Google Classroom. 

In the coming weeks, we will be introducing a new feature that allows teachers to set up a Google Classroom class using information directly imported from an SIS, including co-teachers, student rosters and class lists, grading categories and grading periods. Please note this feature is only available with our current SIS partners. 

In preparation for the “full class” import feature, we advise admins to connect Classroom to their Student Information System (SIS) as soon as possible. Once the admin establishes a connection between their district SIS and Google Classroom, teachers will be able to use the connection to import data from their SIS to set up new classes or update existing classes when the feature launches later this quarter. 

Google Classroom teachers can now export and import select information via the new integration with PowerSchool SIS, a third-party student information system (SIS) that provides innovative K-12 software and cloud-based solutions to improve educational outcomes and simplify school operations. 

Once an admin establishes a connection between PowerSchool SIS and Classroom, teachers will be able to export grades from Classroom to PowerTeacher Pro Gradebook. Teachers can also import useful information, such as student rosters, co-teachers and grading categories, from PowerSchool SIS into Classroom. 

In the last year, we’ve added new features, such as disabling submissions after a due date in Google Classroom and excusing assignments in Google Classroom, in order to give teachers even more flexibility when it comes to grading for assignments and classwork. 

Today, we're improving support for missing assignments in gradebook by giving teachers the ability to manually mark an assignment as ‘missing’ or ‘complete’ and automatically add a default draft score. 

Last year, we introduced grading periods, an option that allows administrators and teachers to define and apply grading periods segmented from the entire school year to their Google Classroom assignments. 

Today, we’re excited to announce grading period endpoints and capabilities in the Classroom API, available through the Google Workspace Developer Preview Program. Specifically, developers can now: 

In 2022, we made it easy to seamlessly access popular Education Technology tools directly in Google Classroom. We partnered with 20+ EdTech companies, including Kahoot!, Pear Deck, IXL, ReadWorks, and Nearpod, to build Google Classroom add-ons. These new integrations let educators and students easily find, use, and grade great content in their favorite EdTech tools without having to navigate to external websites and apps. 

Today, we’re excited to make Classroom add-ons generally available to all developers. Now, developers can build an add-on to allow teachers to do the following within Classroom: 

Admins, end users, and developers 

Last year, we introduced interactive questions for YouTube videos in Google Classroom. Since then, educators have been able to turn a passive watching experience into an engaging one, while improving students’ understanding of a subject. 

The current process to create interactive questions requires an educator to manually choose a timestamp, come up with questions, and insert correct answers and distractors. To improve upon this experience and save educators time, we’re introducing AI-suggested questions that educators can easily attach to the video based on its content. 

Before assigning the interactive video activity, Educators will be able to edit the suggested questions ahead of attaching the YouTube video to the assignment. 

In 2019, we launched Read Along as an Android reading app to help young readers have fun while learning to read. Read Along has an in-app reading buddy who guides readers along as they read aloud, offering assistance when they struggle, and rewarding them with stars when they’re successful. 

Today, we are excited to introduce Read Along in Google Classroom, a new feature that helps students build their independent reading skills by enabling teachers to assign differentiated reading activities, based on Lexile® measure, grade level, or phonics skills. With this feature, a digital reading buddy, Diya, gives students real-time assistance and pronunciation support, with the help of AI. Read Along offers engaging and inspiring reading assignments, while providing educators with insights on students' reading progress over time, including their accuracy, speed, and comprehension.

Educators can also: 

Admins and end users 

Since adding practice sets to Google Classroom in 2023, we’ve made numerous improvements such as giving teachers more control over the resources for students in practice sets and adding the option to convert Google Forms into practice sets. 

Today, we’re excited to introduce a new feature that will enable teachers to visually illustrate concepts being assessed in practice sets. Now, teachers can import images, like graphs, charts or photos, into practice sets using files from Google Drive or directly from their computer. 

In addition to image editing capabilities within practice sets, this update will be extended to the Forms conversion workflows so if a teacher imports a Form into a practice set any images you have in the Forms will also import. 

Since last year, educators have been able to easily import students from their student information system (SIS) to Google Classroom using OneRoster. Today, we’re introducing the option for teachers to import their grade categories and co-teachers from their linked SIS. 

Once an admin establishes a connection between their district SIS and Google Classroom, teachers can manually link new or existing Google Classroom classes to their SIS, then use the connection to export grades, import students rosters, and now, import grading categories or co-teachers. 

Last year, we announced a Google Classroom beta that simplifies lesson planning with shareable class templates and classwork. We’re excited to announce that this is now globally available for Google Workspace for Education Plus customers in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese. 

Curriculum leads and verified teachers can now share links to high-quality classes and class templates so other educators in their organization can preview and import classwork to an existing class or to a new class. This will provide educators with ideas for instructional design and enable them stay up-to-date with the best materials. 

Last year, we announced a new tool in Google Classroom called practice sets that enables educators to transform new and existing content into engaging and interactive assignments. Students get real-time feedback on answers as they complete practice sets and then teachers receive performance insights and snapshots into student progress. 

Since launching, we’ve given teachers more control over the resources for students in practice sets and today we’re excited to announce an additional way to save teachers time when creating assignments. We know teachers have already invested a lot of time creating quiz assignments using Google Forms, and with this update, they can simply import a Google Form into practice set questions, and benefit from the assistive features, such as suggested resources and hints, in-the-moment support for students and insights. 

Educators can now turn any YouTube video into an interactive lesson by adding questions for their students to answer throughout the video. 

The interactive questions feature turns a passive watching experience into an engaging one, and improves students’ understanding of a subject by providing them with the space to make mistakes, review incorrect answers and assess correct answers at their own pace. 

Once students within a class have completed the video activity, educators will have access to a dashboard of key insights based on student engagement levels. 

Following the expansion of grading systems in Google Classroom, we’re adding an additional feature that gives teachers even more flexibility when it comes to grading for assignments and classwork. 

Starting today, teachers can mark an assignment for a particular student as “Excused” instead of giving it a 0-100 score. This will exclude that particular assignment from the student’s overall grade. We hope this requested feature addresses various class scenarios, such as wanting to drop a student’s lowest assignment, excusing an assignment when a student is absent, or any other circumstance in which an assignment should not be included in a student’s grade. 

Educators can now easily import students from their student information system (SIS) to Google Classroom using OneRoster. This integration saves educators time and helps make class setup much quicker. 

We’re introducing analytics in Google Classroom, providing a centralized view of Classroom data and insights for educators and education leaders. 

Designated education leaders and support staff now have direct visibility into student performance and engagement in the classroom, including if assignments are being completed, how grades are trending, and how Classroom features are being adopted. Education leaders will see a bird’s eye view of insights, with the ability to easily drill down further to identify which students, classes, and schools may need support. 

Educators will also be able to see the same type of data for the classes they teach, providing them with a centralized snapshot of how each student in their class is trending. For example, if an educator sees that a student has low assignment completion this month, they can drill down to the list of missing assignments and follow up to see how to best support this student. 

In June, we introduced updates to the embeddable YouTube player within Google Workspace for Education services. This included a new URL (www.youtubeeducation.com) for the YouTube player to serve embedded content within Google Workspace for Education services. 

As a result of this change, if your organization allowed or blocked YouTube videos within Google Workspace for Education services, you were asked to add “www.youtubeeducation.com” to these allowlists or blocklists. This preserved the way your organization used YouTube videos within Google Workspace for Education services, such as Google Classroom or Slides.

We are removing this feature while we evaluate performance and quality. As an immediate next step, if you updated your allowlist or blocklist to include "www.youtube.com", you’ll need to revert your allowlist/blocklist to include "www.youtube.com" as soon as possible to preserve the way your organization uses YouTube videos within Google Workspace for Education services. If you do not revert your allowlist/blocklist to include www.youtube.com as soon as possible, this could change your organization’s access to YouTube videos.
Getting started 

• Admins: Revert your allowlist/blocklist to include "www.youtube.com". Visit the Help Center to learn more about setting up a Google Workspace host name allowlist.
• End users: There is no end user setting for this feature. 

Rollout pace 

• This change is now in effect for Classroom services. 
• This change will be in effect for Slides, Sites and Forms starting on November 7, 2023.

Availability 

• This impacts Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Education Plus, and the Teaching and Learning Upgrade 

Resources 

• Google Workspace Admin Help: Set up a Google Workspace host name allowlist

Currently, teachers can set up grading systems in Google Classroom using points, grade categories, or grading periods. These options are numerical-based, meaning they correlate to points or percentages. 

In order to support other forms of grading, such as letter grades or proficiency ratings (ex. unsatisfactory to excellent), we’re introducing customizable grading scales so that a school’s or teacher’s grading preferences are better reflected in Google Classroom. With this update, teachers will have the option to select from numerical, letter grade, proficiency, four-point grading scales, or set up their own scale. 

Once the grading scale is selected and personalized (if the teacher chooses to do so), teachers can create assignments right away and any existing assignments will automatically have their newly selected grading scale. When grading assignments, teachers can enter either the grade with the points value or the level from the grading scale and Classroom will automatically display both to teachers and to students once a grade is returned. Who’s impacted 

End users 

Earlier this year, practice sets became generally available, allowing educators to transform new and existing content into engaging and interactive assignments. With autograding built in, teachers can receive performance insights and snapshots into student progress, and students get real-time feedback as they complete practice sets. 

Currently in practice sets, when a teacher selects a skill for a problem, resources are activated for the student. The students see a lightbulb next to that problem and a resource tray for “extra help” appears. 

To improve upon this experience, we’re excited to announce an update that gives teachers more control over the resources for students in practice sets. Specially, teachers can now: 

Admins and end users 

Previously, curriculum leaders and educators had to add permanent co-teachers in order to share or distribute curricula. This could result in access issues, unnecessary notifications and homepage clutter. 

To improve this experience, we’re excited to announce a Google Classroom beta that will simplify lesson planning with others and make classroom materials more accessible. Through the beta, curriculum leads and verified teachers can share links to high-quality classes and class templates so other educators in their organization can preview and import classwork to an existing class or to a new class. This will provide educators with ideas for instructional design and enable them stay up-to-date with the best materials. 

This beta will be globally available for Google Workspace for Education Plus customers in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese. Google Workspace admins can use this sign-up form to apply for the beta from now until September 1, 2023.