10 Excel and Google Spreadsheets To Make a Teacher’s Life Easier

Plan tomorrow’s lesson. Track students’ behavior and progress in reading. Make sure everyone brought permission slips. Contact parents. And decide what’s for dinner. 

Teachers have busy lives and careers! However, they don’t have to reinvent the wheel to manage everything.

By harnessing the power of Excel and Google Sheets templates, educators can streamline their daily tasks and gain back control of work/life balance. Make managing career responsibilities easier by utilizing these ten spreadsheets to reduce stress and help reach those goals.

1. Behavior tracking

Throughout the day, teachers often have to track specific behaviors for students with behavioral or individualized education plans (IEPs). Every teacher has their own methods for tracking these items, but it can become overwhelming. Through use of a Google Form that feeds automatically into a Google Sheet, you can easily record all the necessary information for each observation. This simple step can save precious time and resources for both teachers and students. With a few clicks, you can organize and track data more efficiently, providing more time for teaching and less time on paperwork.

Using the Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence form has become a popular way to record incidents happening in classrooms. It gives teachers a place to type-in what led up to an action, the behavior itself, and its subsequent repercussions. Not only does this let educators document events easily; it also provides insight into why they happen. This means that teachers can create better strategies for managing their classrooms effectively.

Upon completion of the form, the information is quickly transferred to a tidy Google Sheet with the exact time logged. Sharing this record with those who require it provides an effortless way of keeping track of behavior records.

2. Grade book

While your school may have a certain format or place you must track grades, sometimes they aren’t very convenient. Using a digital grade book allows you to not only track grades but also analyze the data. The charts and graphs are great for data meetings, and evaluating the academic and behavioral progress of your students.

This template also provides a method for the easy creation of an individual report, which is perfect to present to parents who request constant updates about their child’s progress, sending updates to a student’s household, or tracking missing assignments. 

3. Student roster and checklist

Teachers often reference their roster throughout the day. By consolidating it into a digital form, you can benefit from maintaining an up-to-date list of activities. Try creating two tabs – one to note which students attended guided reading and another to track returned forms or permission slips. This ensures that your classroom runs efficiently and is managed in an orderly fashion, benefitting both teachers and students alike. You can monitor attendance and verify which students have completed a project right at your fingertips – even when you’re out on the playground for fire drills.

4. Progress tracker

Digital spreadsheets provide a highly convenient means for tracking student progression. The Kayla Tracker was designed to address the requirement of monitoring proficiency in new curricula. It features an easy-to-use interface allowing users to save data relative to students, convey assignments and monitor improvement in terms of standards – all without difficulty. Now it is simpler than ever before to remain well-organized regarding student development. 

Data collected can be of great use in assisting teachers with understanding their students’ progress, as well as providing guidance for professional development plans and evaluations throughout the school year.

5. Bathroom sign out

Ask any teacher how they manage bathroom passes. You’ll hear a sigh. Many methods have been tried: the sanitizer as a pass, a notebook sign out, and comically large and identifiable cards. The problem is that none of them are viable solutions. 

With a digital bathroom sign-out sheet, teachers have a student-managed way to easily track bathroom breaks. It’s simple to see who is leaving each day and track who is out of the classroom during an emergency.

6. Rubrics

Students need to be aware of how they’ll be evaluated on their assignments so they can best show what they’ve learned. Rubrics make the grading process clear to students, enable teachers to assign grades without prejudice, and help make grading simpler and faster. Utilizing rubrics is key for successful assessment practices.

By incorporating digital rubrics into your teaching, you have easy access to showcase classroom requirements. Templates like this one also provide an area for simple grading and even communicating your feedback to students automatically. 

7. Lesson planning

Creating a lesson plan can be a monumental task, but utilizing a Google Sheets lesson plan template makes it easier and more efficient. Not only will you save valuable time, but the ability to share and collaborate with other educators makes it simple to discuss plans with your team or even parents. With this template at your fingertips, planning lessons has never been easier!

With a lesson plan template, the work of planning classes is significantly easier and allows you more time to spend on making sure each lesson is engaging. A template takes the hassle out of preparing for each class session; simply fill in the necessary information and start planning fun activities for your students!

8. To-Do lists

Teachers can often find themselves with a multitude of tasks to accomplish each day. Rather than relying on a “pile of sticky notes” approach, paper notes can easily become soaked in coffee or end up scattered across the floor due to the hustle and bustle of the day. 

By creating a to-do list template in Excel, you can effortlessly centralize all of your tasks into one secure location. Furthermore, you gain the ability to include notes, dates, and alerts for approaching deadlines. Even if you’re not at school, this useful list will still come in handy for home use as well. 

9. Digital planner

Teachers have many things to track, both professionally and personally. With a digital planner, teachers can easily keep track of their plans and preparations for the classroom. As long as you have a device, you can figure out your next move no matter where you are. This provides an incredible level of convenience and the ability to be prepared all the time.

Different pages contain calendars, to-do lists, customizable checklists, student information, and even handy navigation features to make it easy to find the right page. Outside the classroom, you can use one calendar for meal planning and another for checklists to plan vacation time or chores at home. A single planner can help organize your entire life — not just teaching tasks.

10. Monthly budget

You’re walking through the dollar store and spot the cutest dry-erase boards. They’re exactly what you need for the classroom. But do you have the money to buy a whole set for your class? If you’re using a template for maintaining a monthly budget, it only takes a moment to verify. Plus, different sheets in the template help you track financial goals and plan for upcoming purchases.

There’s even a tracker to record your successes. As an added bonus, you can combine this template with your digital planner and all your important files will be in one convenient place.

These helpful templates are only the beginning. You can find many more online with a simple search. Use the student checklist to plan out professional development opportunities for the year, with each column indicating training dates, speakers, certificates received, and credit.

You can now create a seamless, customized unit plan that long outlasts any physical planner. By making use of spreadsheet software and laying out dates, things to remember, tasks to accomplish, and other important items, you can form an effective unit plan that puts all your details in one secure location.