Planning for a Substitute.

I recently read that it is important to have detailed lesson plans so if you are sick, you don't have to come in to make lesson plans for the substitute.  The place I last worked required teachers to have a substitute book complete with attendance sheets, lessons, etc so if you were suddenly out, there was something for the sub to follow.

I do not like having a sub trying to follow my lesson plans, detailed or not, because most of them barely have a high school diploma.  Usually, I'm lucky if the sub even follows the directions I've left behind so I hate being out.

I love it when I'm able to use something like Google Classroom as part of the daily routine because I can post everything to it for the students and send a quick note with lesson plans to the school secretary or another teacher.  This way the sub has general lesson plans but I've been able to post the specifics in Google Classroom.

I can post warm-ups, videos, work, everything so that students do not loose time because the sub has trouble following written directions.  When I am gone, I love posting links to annotated videos because these often have questions or reminders for students.  They can also write down notes in their notebooks and I don't have to be there.

I can also post links to work such as in Thinglink or post a hyperdoc which leads them through the basic material.  I love that the internet now has lots of quizzes or activities which are interactive.  By interactive, I mean students type in the answer and they get immediate feedback while I get information on which questions students missed and which they got correct.

If I know I am going to be out several days and I'm not sure if they can handle the new material while I'm gone, I sometimes assign a project such as creating a math tour of mathematically significant buildings, or investigate musical compositions based on pi or research mathematicians.  For the last, I'd set up google slides where students post the information on the mathematician so at the end, we could turn the slides into books.

Another thing I like to assign are certain internet based mathematical games for students to play and write reviews.  The reviews should cover the aspect of math the game focuses on such as in Angry Birds, you are working with parabolas,  how the game is played, and what they think of the game and why.  The last thing they would do is to explain how the designers could make the game better.

One thing I keep in the room for those days when I cannot plan ahead, do not have access to the internet are episodes of the old TV series Numb3rs because I can still find activities to go with each episode on the internet.  I can have the sub show the video one day and the next have the students work on the activity.  Early in the year, just before school starts, I take time to write guided notes they can fill in as they watch the video so they know what is important.

Usually I keep emergency lesson plans around but once in a while something happens and you do not have time to prepare.  About a year and a half ago, I got a call that my sister was in the hospital, possibly dying.  I got out of there but because of Google Classroom, I posted daily assignments, answered questions, etc without freaking out about not leaving proper lesson plans.  It made life easier.

I love the digital era in that it does make life so much easier in regard to subs.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.