Google Classroom Materials
Google added Materials to Classroom in early 2019. This greatly changed how teachers use Google Classroom as in the past, teachers used the announcement feature to post resources that the students required for content consumption. When Google added the Classwork tab, they created separation for Assignments and Questions from the Stream and it required that there needed to be a way to post resources for content consumption and can be organized by topic. Announcements remained only in the Stream.
This video demonstrates how to use Materials and organize them by topic. There are two methods by which this works well. 1. Post each link/document individually and organize each one under one topic. 2. Post several links/resources under one material so that they can reside with assignments and questions under a topic. The preference is up to you and needs to be consistent for the sake of students.
For more information about Google Classroom, see my playlist here: • Google Classroom: Create a Class