Share What You Want with Students & Families Using Class Websites in Common Planner — No Logins, Just a Link!

Setting up the Class Website The Class Website feature provides a way for teachers to share classroom information directly with families and students.
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How you get to it to set it up is it's gonna be under the share button. So you click share, and then there's this option that says with students and families. That's where you wanna click it, and then it looks like this.

Now it's super easy and super fast to create a website.

All I have to do is click that button, and then you can title it whatever you want. I'm gonna go ahead and title this my period one, and then you can edit the URL if you'd like to. So change it to your name or your name in period one or whatever the name of the class is.

And then you get to select which courses in your plan book are going to show up in this class website.

So I'm gonna click the arrow on mine. These are all of the sections that I have in my plan book. I'm gonna set this up for my period one, so I'm just gonna click period one. But you can put multiple in there. So if you are a secondary teacher and you have different groups of students throughout your day, then you probably wanna set up different class websites, right, because you're gonna send out a different link to those different groups of students and families.

So you might set one up. You might create another class website, and then that might be for your period two. And then you might set up another one for your period three and so on.

But if you are an elementary teacher, you might have, you know, the same groups of students all day. So then if you have morning meeting and social studies and English and science, then you might wanna click all of those and add those into your class website. So you just have to send out one link to your families instead of multiple links for the different subjects.

Click out of that. This is also where you get to choose if you want to show your units that you have planned on your class website. I'm gonna go ahead and turn that on.

None of that. All they need is the link, and that's it.

So then I'm gonna go ahead and visit the website here.

Okay. So as you can see right now, all you can see is the unit because I said that I wanted the unit to show up and then the title of the lesson. So that's all you can see right now because it's up to you what you want to show on your class website. So if there are pieces of your lessons, that's only for you. So I know for me, I would have had notes in my lesson plans. I would have had accommodations and modifications for students.

Those are two things I definitely wouldn't have wanted students or families to be able to see. Right? So I wouldn't put those on my class website.

So I'm gonna go back and show you how to make sure you can add all the pieces that you want to, but make sure none of the pieces you don't want to show up. Okay. So I'm gonna go back, if my computer will cooperate.

We have to okay.

Alright. So I'm gonna go back to my week view, and then here's all my lessons. So I can go in, and I can publish each card individually on the website if I want to. So let's say I want this standards card to show up on the website for Monday, July twenty first. So just hover over the card and then click the globe to show on the class website, and now it's visible on the class website.

Let's say I also want my agenda card to show up. I can click the globe, show on the class website, and then it says it's visible on the class website. If I accidentally click one, I don't want it to show up, just click that globe again, and then you can hide it. And then it will be off of your class website.

So then for Tuesday, I could go ahead and do the same thing.

Let's say I want, the procedures card to show up on that day. You know, I hover over it. I can click that, and I could go through my week and do it that way individually.

If you already have lessons planned in your plan book, then that's how you wanna do it. You wanna go through and click which ones you want to show up.

But if you don't wanna do it that way every day because that could be a little bit time consuming, might not take that long. If you just go at the beginning of the week, click them all on, it would just take a few minutes.

But if you want to make sure that all of the cards automatically show up, how you wanna do that is by going to your settings and then clicking on templates.

So I'm gonna go over to my period one and edit the template there. And then here's where you can select the same thing you did in the individual lesson lessons, except now it's applied to your template.

So if I want the standards card to show up, I just click that, show on the website.

I want my procedures.

Click that, show on the website. Homework, want that to show up too. But then definitely not accommodations or modifications, so I'm just leaving that. So I'm gonna hit done. And now in that template, I don't have any lessons planned yet, but it's already visible on the class website. So now when I type stuff in here, it will automatically show up.

Okay. So I'm gonna go back to the class website to show you what that looks like.

Go back to my share. Get guys out of the way here. Okay. Students and families.

Visit my website.

Okay. So now on Monday, July twenty first, on that day that I chose these cards, now here they show up.

And then I didn't choose any for these. That's why they didn't show up. I'm gonna go.

Here's ones here that I chose. And then, again, these are lessons I haven't filled out yet. But since I put in the template to automatically show those cards, whenever I do, they will automatically show up here. I don't have to go in individually.

And then when your students have access to this website, they can click throughout the year. So if you have your lesson plans done and you want them to be able to see what's upcoming, it will all be posted right here.

If you want more control over what when they see it, then you probably wanna go in and put individual when you want those certain cards to show up.

Okay. I'm gonna click on units to show you what that looks like. Okay. So here's my unit that I've that I've put to show up because I put I want units.

So if I click into this unit, here's lessons that I have, but I haven't made any cards for that unit public to the website yet. So I'll show you how to do that. So you want to do the same thing you did when you went to the lesson template. You're gonna go do that in the unit.

Okay. So I'm gonna click into my unit, and here's my unit plans.

So you see I have several cards within my unit, but now I'm gonna choose which parts of this I want to show up on the class website. So if I want the standards, again, I just hit that globe, show on the website.

My objectives, yes, I want them to show.

Video links, you click them to show.

And if you post cards on your website with links, students are going to be able to click them. Like, if it's a public link, then whoever has access to your website can open it. So this is really good for if you have, like, documents or things you want to send home to families.

I know when I was teaching, I would send some things home, and it just never made it back. Or, you know, parents would say or students would say, you know, I lost that, or I never saw that.

If you post that on the website, then it's right there. Like, there's there's no losing it. There's no saying they didn't see it. They'll have access to it right there on your website.

It's also really good for homework too.

Or if they miss something in class, there's a quick video they need to go watch, it's right there on their website. They don't have to come to you and ask you, hey. What did we watch? Can you send me that link? Or can you send me that worksheet? You can just post it on your class website.

Okay. Close out of this.

Alright. And then that's pretty much it. It's really simple. It's completely customizable, so you can put all the parts of your lessons or you can put one section of your lesson. It's completely up to you. I'm gonna stop sharing, and I'm gonna go check out the chat.