In Google Classroom, if you open a student document from Classroom it opens in the Feedback tool. For Google text documents, this defaults to suggestion mode. This means that if you type on a student’s Google text document that it is added as a suggestion the student has to approve in the generated comment.
Edit Directly
There is no way to not open a Google Doc in Google Classroom not in suggestion mode. You can click on the folder icon under the “Turned In” count in an assignment to open the document in Google Drive instead of the feedback tool. This will be in edit mode.
You can pop out the document from the feedback tool by using the sidebar and clicking the square icon next to the document “attachment.” The popped out document will be in edit mode.
Keyboard Shortcut
The other solution is to learn the keyboard shortcut. It will take a little time to make this muscle memory, but if your’e a high school teacher opening over 100 documents this will become habit in not time!!
When you open a student document, it is in suggestion mode. You can go up to the toolbar and switch it to the pencil icon for editing mode each time or … UNDO the suggestion mode.
(hence the shortcut Z. Control Z is the shortcut to undo. So now throw in the alt key and the shift key into that and you undo suggestion mode.)
Back to Suggestion Mode
I so infrequently move TO suggestion mode it seems silly to muscle memory the keyboard shortcut. But for some of you this would be very handy. The X is right next to the Z on the keyboard. So Control Alt Shift X will toggle you back to suggestion mode.
Mac Users
I usually wouldn’t post the Mac shortcuts since 90% of the time you just swap out Control for Command but in this case…
And similarly Command Option Shift X will toggle you back to suggesting mode.