Online Class Instructions

Google Classroom

JOIN GOOGLE CLASSROOM  

Use the code provided in the email to add your Google account to the classroom. PLEASE ONLY ADD ONE GOOGLE ACCOUNT PER STUDENT. SEE DIRECTIONS BELOW ON HOW TO MONITOR YOUR STUDENT’S WORK. Your student’s school account will not work, so please use a personal Gmail account (i.e. example@gmail.com)

You can access the classroom by visiting classroom.google.com, and make sure that in the top right you are signed into the Gmail account that you want to use to manage work for the class.

GOOGLE CLASSROOM NOTIFIES YOU BY EMAIL OF NEW POSTS: Parents, if your student is too young to manage his or her own Google Classroom account, please make sure that the email that you used to join Google Classroom is one that you are actively checking or forwarding to your own email. Google classroom sends out automatic email notifications if we add any posts (email notifications can also be turned off).

If you have a problem adding to the Classroom, please email us at admin@huntingtonedu.com with your student’s name, class, and a number to reach you. We will try to help you resolve the issue before your first class. If it is an urgent matter, please try calling us, and leave a message if we don’t pick up. Expect that we will likely miss your call the first week because we may be busy preparing for classes or talking to another parent.

How to Monitor Your Student’s Work

DOWNLOAD THE GOOGLE CLASSROOM APP FOR YOUR PHONE: The easiest way to manage and keep track of whether your student is submitting homework is to download the app on your phone and add your student’s Google account used for Classroom on your phone. Then you can receive notifications of posts, be reminded about assignments that are due, view graded work, and check whether your student has submitted homework. Navigate to the “Classwork” tab and click on the icon at the top right (see screen capture below). You’ll be able to view due dates, assignments that are missing, and attachments for assignments that were submitted.

ON THE COMPUTER: Visit classroom.google.com and have your student keep his or her account logged in. Go to the Classwork tab and click on “View your work.”

Google Meet Link

The Google Meet link will be found in the Google Classroom!

We will try to start the first class 10 minutes before the start of class. If you try to join the meeting before it starts, you’ll see the message, “Asking to be let in. You’ll join the call when someone lets you in.”

If you have not used Google Meet before, you can use the green room self-check to  test your microphone, speakers, and video. 

  1. Select the meeting that you want to join.
  2. Before you join the meeting, at the bottom of your preview tile, you’ll find your peripheral devices, such as mic, speaker, and camera.
  3. To check your audio and video, at the bottom of the preview tile:
    • To test your microphone, click Microphone  and speak.
      • If the mic bar moves, your mic works.
    • To test your speaker, click Speaker  and then Test speakers .
      • If you hear a test sound, your speaker works.
    • To test your camera, click Camera Camera.
      • If you see your video in the preview tile, your camera works.
  4. When ready to join the meeting, click Join now.

Change settings before a meeting

Before you join a meeting, you can change your audio and video settings. 

  1. At the top right of your preview tile, click More options  and then Settings .
  2. To change your settings:
    • Audio settings:
      1. In the settings panel, click Audio.
      2. Change the microphone and speakers settings according to your preference.
    • Video settings:
      1. In the settings panel, click Video.
      2. Change the video settings according to your preference.

Online Classroom Rules

REQUIRED: Students need to have a working webcam and microphone.

Teachers need to be able to see students and interact with them. The video must be on during class. Students may mute themselves to keep out background noise, but they need to have the ability to turn on their microphone so that they can speak to the teacher.

Highly Recommended:

  • Please have your student be in a quiet place for class. Being in a room where the TV is on and parents are talking on the phone does not help your student focus. Being in a noisy environment also affects the rest of the class because when your student is responding to or asking a question, all the background noise floods in.
  • We encourage parents to start training their students who are 4th grade and older to learn how to print, scan, and submit their assignments. We have students as young as 3rd grade who already doing everything independently and that reduces the load on their parents.

Technical configurations in order from best to less ideal:

1) Desktop with webcam and wired internet connection. A free moving webcam allows for better quality and range of motion.
2) Laptop with a wired internet connection
3) Desktop/laptop with Wi-Fi
4) Tablet with Wi-Fi

Using Wi-Fi is fine if you are not having a connectivity issues (choppy video/audio). Please use a computer with a webcam or a laptop with a built-in webcam because we have found students using a tablet often have problems with the program freezing and not allowing them to turn on their video or audio.

Scanning/ Uploading Homework

Very Important – read carefully!

  • Homework must be scanned using a scanner or a scanner app on your phone (see video below). 
  • Recommended size is 1- 5 MB. File size should not be greater than 20 MB.
  • SINGLE PDF FILE – please do not send 20 separate pictures in jpeg form
  • Black and White – do not scan using color, which makes the file size much larger
  • Increase the Darkness setting if needed – Make sure student’s pencil markings can be read 
  • Proper orientation – pages should not be upside down
  • NAME THE FILE PROPERLY: Class, Assignment # – Student name 
    Follow the same naming as on the assignment post in Google Classroom (3rd 5 – Jane Doe). Often students forget to write their name on their physical homework and when the digital file also is not named, it’s hard to figure out whose homework it is.
  • Turn in homework on time – Homework needs to be turned in by the end of the day on the day of your class or it may not get graded. We will send reminders through Google Classroom when an assignment is due. It is too difficult to continually check to see if we have late assignments that need to be graded.
  • Turn in homework to the matching post –  For example, if you’re trying to turn in 4th 3 (meaning assignment #3), open the post for that assignment (under “Classwork”), and attach your scanned homework there (see video below).

IMPORTANT! If you are new to our classes, you should watch these videos! Watch the videos on another device and follow along on your phone. This is a good opportunity to have your child watch and learn with you.

Video on how to scan with an Android phone using Google Drive and turn in your homework to Google Classroom:

Video on how to scan with an iPhone using Notes app and turn in your homework to Google Classroom:

Video on how to turn in your homework in Google Classroom through the browser on your computer if you used a scanning machine and your homework file is on your computer:

If you are using a phone to scan, here are some tips:

  • Download the Google Classroom app. You’ll easily be able to share the scanned file to the app and won’t have to go through the browser.
  • Make sure there are no hard shadows and that the paper is lying on a flat surface that is a darker color so that the app can detect the edges of the paper easily.
  • Change your setting to Black and White
  • Proceed to take pictures of all pages of the homework and you should save as ONE pdf file
  • Depending on the app you are using, there may not be many options other than B&W vs color. If your file size is still greater than 20MB, you may need to reduce the camera resolution setting on your phone temporarily.

If you are using a scanning machine, here are some settings that might help:

  • Duplex (double-sided scanning) if you have printed out the homework double-sided
  • Black and White
  • 150 dpi or less
  • Adjust “Brightness” or “B &W Threshold” to darken the scan if pencil marks are not legible.
  • Output should be a single file that is a PDF image. Do not let the software try to recognize and convert the scan to text.

Scheduling a Make-up Lesson 

Recordings of classes are not readily accessible online and will involve many extra administrative steps. At earliest, appointments need to be booked for the day AFTER the live class occurs. The scheduling site only displays times that are at least 24 hours in the future, so please plan ahead and make your booking at least 24 hours before your desired appointment time.

After you’ve made your appointment through our website, we will upload a recording of the class and post a private link in Google Classroom for you to watch the video at your scheduled time. Before you click on the link, go to www.youtube.com and click in the upper right hand corner. Make sure you are logged into the same Google account that you use in Google Classroom. Now when you click on the link, the video should play.

Book the make-up lesson the usual way:

Please go to www.HuntingtonEd.com and click on “Schedule Make up” in the menu. There are directions on the website. At the bottom of the page, you need to click “Accept,” and it will take you to the scheduling page. Select “Make-up class,” which has a $10 fee.

In the comments box labeled “optional” after signing in, you will need to include
STUDENT NAME, CLASS NAME, DATE MISSED.

For example:
John Doe, 6th grade math, 6/5/23.

Appointments booked online at least 24hrs in advance of your desired appointment time are $10.

Appointments booked less than 24hrs in advance by phone are $15.

Graded Assignments and Keys

Now that we are posting the corrections online, some parents are going over the mistakes with their students, which is wonderful, but getting stumped on a few questions and wanting to see the answer key. Our classes are not designed to be independent study nor do we expect that parents should know how to fix all of their students’ errors. Students should make a note on those couple questions and ask at the start of the next class, which is when they go over corrections.  As a general policy, we don’t release answer keys. Even if we were to release keys, they do not show the steps. 

Please realize that in grading two hundred math questions per student, there is bound to be human error. Especially, now with grading digitally, it’s very easy to scroll to the wrong page that is formatted similarly to a neighboring page. We may accidentally mark a correct problem as wrong, and it’s possible that our answer key has an error. If there is a question that students aren’t sure about, they should ask in class.

Purpose of Homework 

The overall purpose of the homework is to let students practice the skills learned during class and to help teachers evaluate students’ understanding of the material. For math, we grade the entire assignment. For English, all writing assignments are graded, but teachers may select certain grammar and vocabulary exercises to grade. Topics will overlap from homework to homework, and we include review exercises in subsequent homework so that students have a chance to practice questions that they may have missed on a previous assignment.

Teachers look at the homework mistakes to understand the common errors being made and to know what concepts to revisit during class. Missing a lot of questions on the homework or quizzes we assign does not necessarily correlate to their performance at school because the work we assign is much ahead of school pacing (sometimes by six months or more) and is also more difficult than what they may encounter at school. Students have the opportunity to make mistakes here, learn from their errors, and do their work correctly by the time they see the topics at school.