What’s worse than spending forever writing sub plans? Spending hours writing sub plans that are not followed! There are few things that annoy me as much as a sub who does not follow my carefully crafted plans. One important secret I have learned regarding Sub Plans:

Stop writing the plan to the sub.

Write the plan to the students.

It took me like 9 years to figure out this one (duh!) It makes a lot more sense: The students know me, they know my expectations, they know where the materials are….and they’ll have to answer to ME if they don’t follow my plan!

I write my plan in google slides and when I am absent, I ask a colleague to turn on my screen and project my plan. All the sub has to do is click through the slides…all the activities, reminders, instructions, videos, timers, notes, etc, etc, etc are written on the screen for the students, in the correct order.

(If you can’t project a power point when you’re not there, you could type out the plan and leave copies for your students which I bet would work out as well, or post the slideshow in Google Classroom or whatever fancy shmancy Learning Platform you use. )

Literally, all my sub has to do is click through the slideshow:

I remind them of the things we do EVERY CLASS, that they seem to forget when a sub is in the room!

I leave them a little note and a little note for the sub too. I just want to remind my Little Darlings that the sub will be reporting back, so they ought to be on their best behavior!

Then I give them directions for the day’s activities, including instructions, timers, videos…everything they’ll need to carry on without me:

And lastly I print out a hand out and write any additional notes to my sub. It makes it easy for the sub to know what’s coming next.

Once I’ve made my template, it’s easy (OK, easyish!) to change out my activities and keep the structure of the slideshow the same for every sub plan.

And because I love you, here’s a template for you! Click here to make a copy and tell those Little Darlings what to do while you’re away!

Writing sub plans is darn near at the bottom of my list “Favorite Things about Teaching” but I’m always happier with the way a sub day goes if I write my Sub Plan to my students.