Back to school: How do I rearrange my students and classes?

A new school year means new classes. Students move up, groups change, and you need everything set up in Rockalingua before the first day.

The way you rearrange your classes depends on how they were created. Read the section that matches your situation.

Classes connected to a rostering platform (Clever, ClassLink, or Google Classroom)

For classes managed by your school or your district

They will update the class rosters on the platform they chose (Clever, ClassLink, or Google Classroom) before the school year starts.

Wait until they confirm that everything is ready.

Then sync the changes in Rockalingua.

For classes managed by yourself at Google Classroom

Make the changes directly in Google Classroom first.

Then sync them in Rockalingua.

Classes created manually in Rockalingua

You have three options. Take a moment to understand the differences before you choose. The right choice depends on your situation and on how old your students are.

Option 1: Archive the old classes and let students self-enroll in the new ones

This is the quickest option.

1. Archive the classes from last year.
2. Create new classes for this school year.
3. Share a class invite code with your students or add them manually.
4. Tell them how join the class using the code.

Why you might choose this option:

• It requires very little effort from you.
• Your students get a fresh, clean dashboard for the new school year.

Things to keep in mind:

• The students will get a new username and password, different from last year.
• The students history from last year is not carried over. You can still look up their old work in the archived classes manually, though.
• Self-enrollment works well for older students, but if your students are very young, they may have trouble with the process.

Option 2: Create new classes and move the students (Recommended)

This is quick too, but better.

1. Create new classes for this school year.
2. Move the students from the old classes into the new ones.
3. Archive the old classes.

Why this is the recommended option:

• Your students also get a fresh, clean dashboard for the new school year.
• Each student keeps their existing account.
• Their history from last year is preserved and you can access it right from their new class.

Things to keep in mind:

• The steps are simple, but moving students takes a bit more time.

• Do not forget to archive the old classes when you are done.

  If you skip this step, your students will see a prompt asking them to choose a class every time they log in, because they are enrolled in two active classes.

  That will be confusing for them.

Option 3: Keep using the old classes or rename them (NOT RECOMMENDED)

You could simply continue using last year’s classes, or rename them to match the new school year.

Avoid this method.

We include it here only because saw some teachers try it, and we want to be clear about why it is a bad idea:

• Your students will still see all the tasks from last year alongside the new ones you create this year. This will be very confusing for them.
• You will also see all the old tasks in your class view. This makes it harder to find and manage the new tasks you assign.

Do yourself and your students a favor: set up fresh classes for the new year. A clean start makes everything easier.