It’s hard to believe that just a few short years ago, I was a burned out teacher preparing to leave the profession. I was convinced that there was no way to get off the constant planning, constant grading hamster wheel. Luckily, boosting my productivity and efficiency at school was all I needed to turn everything around. One of my favorite principles of productivity is batching. Batching makes it possible to streamline and get just about everything done faster.
What is batching?
Batching is a process for completing tasks that involves repeating the same step of multiple projects. For example, creating all the notes for one week’s worth of instruction. The step I repeat is creating notes. The “project” is preparing a lesson. Through batching, I get the notes done for several lessons.
Through batching, you can increase efficiency. This happens because you get to stay in one frame of mind for longer than you would if you were multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is better described as task-switching. Instead of getting a lot of things done at once, you are doing a lot of different things in one work session. The truth is, your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. And every time you switch to a new task, your brain takes time to catch up. Plus, constant task-switching increases your chance of making mistakes.
Batching your Grading
This is a batching task that you probably do already. Instead of switching from grading one assignment to another, focus on grading the same assignment for all of the classes that completed it. When you have 2 (or more) classes that are doing the same assignment, grade just that assignment for all classes. Then, you can move on to grading a different assignment. This is how batch grading works!
This strategy is especially helpful when you’re grading late work. Usually there’s several different assignments you have to grade. But you can still batch the same assignments together to save time.
Batch Email
Do you ever send out the same email to several people? Or send out the same email on a regular basis? Yup! That can be batched too. This virtual year I am personally emailing students about the work they’re missing. It sounds like it would take forever, but with batching, it only takes 5 minutes – for all of my classes.
Every morning, I start the day by batch grading the assignments that are no longer being accepted, and then the assignments that are on their last day of acceptance. When I’m on those last day assignments, I email all of the students that are still missing them. To batch this task, I use the blind carbon copy to send the same email to every student. And I use a pre-made email template. All I have to do is add the title of the assignment. The email is already written for me.
Need help getting started with email templates? Check out this tutorial I made for Gmail!
Batching Communication
How do you communicate with your students? I love setting up ways to communicate ahead of time. During a regular school year, I would always project an informative slide. During our virtual school year, I include a slide with all the important information in Google Classroom every day.
However, updating these slides every week feels like extra work. (I know I don’t have to do it, but it saves me from answering questions constantly while meeting requirements set by our administration.)
For example, the slides I project for Google Meets include the date, a check-in prompt, objective, agenda, and a list of materials. Then, there’s five days of the week, and three different courses I teach.
My Slides Batching Process
To batch this process, I open all three sets of slides in different tabs, and I complete one component at a time.
- First, I update the date on each slide. Once I do this for one class, I can copy and paste to the other class’ slides.
- Second, I change the daily check-in. These are fun little activities to start class and to meet our daily SEL requirement. I do the same check-in for every class, so I can copy and paste each day for each class.
- Next, I update the daily objectives. I open my lesson plans Google sheet in another tab, and I simply copy and paste the objective to each slide.
- Last, I update the daily agenda and materials. Everything else was easy and/or repeatable for all classes, so I like to save this one for last. It requires the most brain power.
Batching Google Classroom Assignments
There are so many components to include in a Google Classroom assignment. I always plan in weekly increments. And again, with 3 different courses and 5 days of instruction, it is work to get everything together. Luckily, I can batch work this task too!
Usually, I have to start and stop this task, and get it done in between my classes. This is why having a batching process is so helpful. There are clear steps for me to follow so I don’t get lost.
Okay, so this process is going to sound like more work, but it actually does help get my assignments done faster. Again, I’m focusing on one small task at a time, instead of switching from one task to another.
Here’s what I do:
First, I start by creating and naming each assignment. I include a colored emoji circle for each day of the week (rainbow order) to give everyone an easy visual. I also include the topic of the day and the date. That’s 3 different things, so yes, it takes some concentration.
While I’m adding those assignments, I find that I can easily fill out the assignment details in the column on the right. It doesn’t take much more concentration to add the grade category, points, due date, and topic. They’re usually the same for most assignments.
Then I go back to each assignment, and add the attachments and directions. I keep a Google Doc of different directions I use, and copy, paste, and update them. Finally, I schedule the assignment.
And lastly, I repost the assignments in my other Google Classrooms when needed.
What else can you batch?
Hopefully through the examples shared in this post, you realize that you can batch just about anything. In order for a task to be batch-able, it needs to have multiple steps and be something you do repeatedly. Treat batching as a time investment. It takes a little bit of time to plan up front, and will need to be refined as you implement. But, in the long run, it will save you loads of time.
My absolute favorite thing to batch is my lesson plans. However, there is a lot more to it than the processes mentioned here. You can learn more about batch lesson planning here.
Ready to start batching like a pro? Be sure to jump on my Teacher Productivity Master Academy waitlist to learn all about systems and how to batch bigger tasks!
For more details about each batching process shared here, check out my Batching Instagram Guide.
