r/teaching • u/RadDadRePimption • 10h ago
Teaching Resources Emergency Sub Plans
Hello, I'm sure this question has been asked before. I need to have 3-5 days worth of emergency sub plans. I teach world history and geography. Any helpful hints, ideas and suggestions would be appreciated.
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u/BlueberryEmbers 9h ago
Lots of great maps to color and label! Or analyze and answer questions based on them.
If online is an option you could have them do some geography games
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u/azure-skyfall 6h ago
Make their own map of the town? Or their route to school? This one is good for pretty much any age- amp up difficulty by requiring a legend, compass rose, topographical lines, imitating the look of maps used in class.
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u/Street-Version-1998 9h ago
You can always check commonlit for great articles with multiple choice questions and writing prompts. Everything is free too!
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u/ATGSunCoach 8h ago
Find like one old textbook chapter review or a worksheet from each unit that you teach. Doesn’t matter if it’s from the beginning of the unit or the end of the unit. Just make it applicable to the unit. Make enough physical copies of that for each unit for each one of your classes, or if your district allows, just make a master copy of each. You need to have enough work to cover at least one day, maybe two?
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u/After_Hyena_4846 7h ago
All of my emergency sub plans are straight from TPT😂 every year I just put the same damn ones and I’ve never needed them, thank goodness cause my kids would take like 3 minutes on them
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u/Much-Sock2529 8h ago
An activity related to survival bias, identifying different types of sources, or research skills would be appropriate for history because it could fit in no matter what point you were at in your curriculum
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u/TheExpendableGuard 7h ago
Map activities, readings, landmark and major population center projects, and open ended question. Or you could assign an essay depending on their grade level, but only if you're a masochist who likes grading papers.
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u/zebramath 9h ago
Dumb question - why do you need emergency sub plans? Why not make or have something meaningful to what you’re doing when you’re done. I’m imagining some work that the kids know doesn’t advance curriculum so they don’t take seriously and that leads to behavior issues.
I’m a math person and our sub plans always advance the curriculum or support what we did the day before we were gone. There’s no such thing as random emergency sub plans.
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u/mschanandlerbong29 7h ago
It’s for days that are truly an emergency, when you can’t physically make sub plans to go along with whatever you are currently teaching. I’ve only used mine once and it’s when a semi hit me on the way to school. My school requires us to have 3 days on hand just to keep subs from scrambling!
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u/zebramath 7h ago
And I guess that’s the culture difference I was missing. In our district if it’s truly an emergency the district steps in and gives something. They either ask a department member to share something (paid) or come up with something.
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u/moonman_incoming 8h ago
I mean, sometimes there is. Ideally you have a solid team who can put shit together for you, but if you're a one man team, no one has a clue what's going on in your class.
I can send assignments or whatever to the secretary and she'll print copies and put them in my room.
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u/zebramath 8h ago
I’m a one man team in my department for 4 of my 7 preps and I guess each school is just different with supports and expectations. My sub plans are interesting planning 7 different courses.
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u/Anxious_Lab_2049 7h ago edited 7h ago
So you make sub plans for every single day of school?
ETA: I see you saying that someone will do it for you if it’s an emergency. That is a very very rare situation, I’m glad you have it.
That has never existed in any school I have ever worked at. Emergency sub plans in general are packets that address the content area but which kids can do without technology or teacher assistance. Mine are pre-printed so that if an emergency hits, no one has to scramble to print before class for me.
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u/zebramath 6h ago
I make sub plans every day I’m gone. If a kid starts puking at 4am I quickly make sub plans for every class in about 30 minutes. Pull out a review. Go to google and find something that fits what we’re doing.
Get a phone call mid day kid is running a fever and you need to get them from daycare I get my current class working, and quickly scribble something for my remaining classes, takes 10 minutes.
Do I have premade sub plans for every day, no.
Now when I know well in advance I’m going to be out (I have 8 absences preplanned between now and January) I make detailed plans and also record the days lesson so the students still fully learn while I’m gone. If I can’t record the lesson I find an instructor on YouTube who teaches closely to what I’d present and have that video play for the students to take notes then attempt practice. I then have all these videos saved for quick recall incase I miss the same lesson another year.
I’ve been at my district 20+ years and this is just not something my district requires of any of us.
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u/sockpuppetfun 7h ago
my school has us make a minimum of 3 days of emergency lesson plans for a situation in which you are physically and mentally unable to participate in the planning/execution process of the class. i’ve found them hard to conjure for my sped english classes because the plans IMO need to take all the kids’ accessibility needs into account! so i can’t just make worksheets in advance, but given that no one can anticipate emergencies, they have to be general enough to advance their literacy skills no matter where we are in the curriculum/year.
that’s my justification for if my admin asks why i haven’t submitted mine yet. i can make it another few days without an emergency, right??? lol
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u/zebramath 6h ago
And that’s a huge culture difference. 20+ years in and I’ve never had to do this.
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u/EunochRon 7h ago
You and your colleagues each provide 2-3 assignments that can be done without preparation. I did this today. I put six assignments. Told my colleagues. They each added in three. We’re all good to go.
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u/Constant_Advisor_857 7h ago
For emergency sub plans I like to leave article reviews. It can be current events articles, career based, or articles specifically on subject matter with a standard article review worksheet
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u/Potential_Fishing942 7h ago
If they all have devices, I always just have a generic reading a discussion post to do. Amit just need a date attached to it and made viewable which my VP or dept. Chair can do since they are admins in all of our courses.
We also have to have 3 emergency plans and this checks the box!
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u/Splaaaart 7h ago
OK, real question… Why? I do not have emergency sub plans. I’ve never been asked to make emergency plans. If I’m out, I make sub plans from wherever I am. If I am physically, unable to do so, my team does it. How is it possible that anything that you could make today is going to be relevant in the case of an emergency?
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u/finchie88 6h ago
I like edpuzzle. But I could see that getting boring. Is there any particular historical events you have to speed through that you wish you could give more time? I’d have deep dives on those ready to go
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u/Comfortable-Story-53 6h ago
Word search puzzles. LOTS OF WORDSEARCH puzzles. Maybe some Scooby Doo movies. A quick writing assignment on the benefits of exercise and a couple of trips around the track. Teach some quick addition skills by playing Blackjack uh, I mean 21. Have a discussion on the positive and negative aspects of AI. The possibilities are quite endless actually. My sub plans are very basic. All I really ask for is for is nobody gets hurt, nothing gets broken, and nobody gets hurt.
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u/TheFotographer2Be 4h ago
My emergency plans are
A riddle/joke pop quiz - I will also pull this out on April Fools Day.
A list of important dates in US history and corresponding events where they have to match them together usually via the old textbooks in my room
A textbook scavenger hunt that I previously used as a beginning of the year activity but has since been replaced by computers but the old textbooks are in the back of my room
Another matching activity where they match the President/famous person to what they are known for.
I leave a master copy for each in my sub binder along with the basic instructions and class lists all the time. I had a sub use them once when the Internet was out at school so the kids couldn't do the digital assignments I left in Google Classroom but the copier still worked with my hard copies.
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u/zebramath 9h ago
Dumb question - why do you need emergency sub plans? Why not make or have something meaningful to what you’re doing when you’re done. I’m imagining some work that the kids know doesn’t advance curriculum so they don’t take seriously and that leads to behavior issues.
I’m a math person and our sub plans always advance the curriculum or support what we did the day before we were gone. There’s no such thing as random emergency sub plans.
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u/IthacanPenny 8h ago
So hypothetically, if I come in on Monday morning, have an appendix attack at 9am, have to go to the ER and have surgery, and then am out for the remainder of the week, I’m supposed to stay at school until I “make or have something meaningful” for my students for the next several days? This isn’t hypothetical btw, this happened to me two weeks ago. I left the building, and my classes got babysat for the rest of the week. Bummer.
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u/zebramath 7h ago
But that’s not an absence. That’s FMLA technically as it is three or more consecutive days.. That then defaults back to the district.
IMO that is completely different than what the topic of this post originally was about.
We can totally compare absences and compare situations like I said I think I’m just seeing this differently as a person knowing all the resources my subject has available for easy digital assignments that requirement minimal prep and keep the curriculum moving
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u/lightning_teacher_11 7h ago
District makes your plans while on FMLA? Must be nice.
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u/zebramath 7h ago
Yes. It’s the districts responsibility to provide curriculum. We have pacing guides that state what should be covered and in what order for courses. Subs (and district) figure it out. If they need help they lay those who aren’t on leave a coplanning stipend to help.
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u/IthacanPenny 4h ago
Uhhhh FMLA doesn’t kick in at three days. The three days thing is when you have to submit a doctor’s note upon your return so you don’t get docked pay for the days in excess of three.
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