Episode Summary
Dread being out due to the thought of making sub plans? In this episode, I give you effective sub plans that allow for a seamless transition for students and guest teachers. I share my approach to creating emergency sub plans with accessible templates and engaging activities for kindergarten. Key topics include detailed instructions, respectful language for “guest teachers,” and proactive communication with students and parents to reduce anxiety. This episode offers practical strategies for teachers to enhance their substitute planning, ensuring a smooth classroom experience during absences.
 “I literally don’t know what I was thinking when I was first teaching where I would make sub plans from scratch each and every time.”
Zeba ~ Ep. 52 Simplifying Sub Plans for Stress-Free Sick Days
In this episode I share:
- Go-to activities for substitutes
- The sub tub strategy
- Language matters
- Preparing students for guest teachers
Resources Mentioned:
Episode Mentioned:
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hey, teacher friends, it’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe here. I’m wondering, how are you feeling today? You feeling sick yet? We are talking all things sub plans and how they don’t actually have to take you so long that you end up going to work sick because it’s just not worth it. That is not good for anyone. That’s spreading germs. That’s not good for you, for your health. It’s going to end up backfiring on you. So let’s talk about how to make our sub plans easy and stress-free.
[0:30] Music. You’re listening to the kindergarten cafe podcast where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away i’m Zeba creator and founder of kindergarten cafe and i help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time work smarter not harder and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started.
[1:22] Okay, so the first thing that we want to understand when working smarter, not harder for making sub plans is that it helps to have a pre-prepared template. I call them like my emergency sub plans.
[1:36] So I make one for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and every year I just update it with the new schedule of the year. And it’s just very generic, basic activities that I can do if I ever was out in emergency and really couldn’t make plans. My teammates could just pull it out and these activities would be good to use which let me say is hard to do in kindergarten to find an activity they can do all year from beginning to end of kindergarten but I’ve done that hard work for you so you can get my exact emergency sub plans I’ll put the link in the show notes below and the activities that come with them the activities that I pull out and just have ready to go but anyway so I have my emergency sub plans and that becomes my template for any time I’m out so I don’t have to think about any notes on students or what the schedule is for that day or special or like what to remember to do for transition to lunch, whatever. It gets all done. I don’t think about that. The only thing I’m changing is like if I want to change up the reading activity to be a little bit more specific or change up the writing activity, math activity, etc. You get it. So I’ll just spend literally five minutes, switching those up and printing it out, gathering what I need, and I’m good to go. That makes it so much easier to make subplans.
[2:56] I also have go-to activities that I leave for subs, and they might change a little bit from time to time. But like in general, if I’m out, the first time in a month that I’m out, I’m always leaving a traceable calendar.
[3:10] I find these free on Teachers Pay Teachers, where the kids are tracing the numbers and going over the month. And it’s beneficial to them because they’re working on number writing and talking about the month and the concept of a month and what’s happening in the month, but it also takes up a decent amount of time and it’s easy to leave for a sub. Because here’s the thing with a sub, you never know who you’re going to get. Some substitute teachers are absolutely amazing and some have never stepped foot in a classroom before and they just don’t know. I am super lucky that my assistant often does the subbing for me. And in that case, it’s even easier for me to leave sub plans. I’ll just be like, here, do this activity. But if I don’t ever. I do think it’s really important to leave detailed, as detailed notes as possible for the activities, for the daily routines, so that subs know exactly what’s expected of them and how the day should flow, which again is why I love having that template ready to go because.
[4:09] I don’t have to come up with the routine writing and all of that, the details, it’s already there. So some of the activities, like I said, I have the traceable calendar that I always do. I’ll just leave a read aloud book. And that’s where I have my book display come in handy. So I’ll even just say pick a book from the display shelf. The books rotate. So I know it’s probably not one the kids have read. Or if it is, there’s other books there that the kids can choose from. And then I’ll just say go off and read. And obviously, this works more for later in the year. and I’ll write down like,
[4:43] make sure to sit with so-and-so or, you know, after 10 minutes, bring them back. Or once they start getting restless, you can do this because they might not know that they have that option and you don’t want them to be reading for longer than they should be.
[4:57] But I digress. The other thing with subs is I never leave anything that I actually expect to get done or that I need to get done because they might have their own way of doing it. They might not fully understand. They might have their own activity that they want to do.
[5:14] I never leave anything that I really care about. And so I just leave simple activities. And again, doing them over and over again is actually a good thing. Even, you know, doing like a bingo game, but changing out the skill. The kids learn the activity. They don’t have to relearn each time, and that just helps the sub when the kids know what you’re doing. But because they don’t always know what they’re doing and I’m trying to leave very simple activities, I tend to stretch out things that I know the kids can do well even longer, and I’ll be generous with the time on my sub plans. So I’ll stretch out their morning play time to longer than I would if I’m trying to keep to a schedule because the kids can play really well and then it’s less time that they’re reading on their own because it’s not like I’m leaving reading groups for my sub. The sub isn’t able to like observe the kids and notice who’s getting distracted and how long they should be building their stamina for reading and you know whatever. So I tend to stretch out the play time. I stretch out the morning meeting. I have them play pop every single time that a teacher is out. I believe I explained that in the morning meeting episode, but it’s super easy. The kids go around the circle counting up to 10 or up to 20 or counting backwards. And when they get to the number that you’ve decided on, when they get to 20, the person says pop and they pop down and sit down and it keeps going around the circle until it gets back to one person remaining.
[6:40] And this is super fun. There’s lots of great educational benefits to practicing the number order and all of that and counting. And the kids have fun, builds community. But also this one does take a lot of time, especially with depending on what numbers you do. And I don’t always have the time when I’m trying to get curriculum done. And when I have a sub, I want to, like I said, I want to stretch that out. So that’s one way to do that as well. And always just leave extra read alouds or say like, if here’s an extra activity, if you need it, it’s just better to leave it and not need it than have the sub not knowing what to do with extra time, which leads me to my next tip, which is to have a sub tub ready to go. I literally have like a bin by my teacher area that has my sub binder, which has very detailed directions for like what to do for different student behaviors, the emergency protocols, like dismissal procedures, all that stuff. And you can get my example and it’s editable as well so that you can just you don’t think like what section should I include? You just have to answer the questions that works for your school and your procedures. But it really just helps a sub feel more prepared when they know what’s going on. If they read it or not, that’s up to them. But it’s there for them.
[7:56] So that’s right next to the sub tub. And then inside the tub, I have just a million, not a million, I have a bunch of activities that I can pull out that are related to math phonics reading. So if I’m like not sure what would be a good activity to fill the time, I just pull one of those out and leave it for the sub and it’s super easy. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to wonder what to plan. I don’t have to go finding anything. It’s all right there. So again, those activities are in my sub-tub bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers.
[8:27] It’s also helpful for, again, if I was ever out in an emergency and my team or my assistant was making plans, they can grab activities from there and just have them ready to go.
[8:37] Okay, so to kind of recap, making sub-plans, you should take your sick time. It’s okay to be out. And the best ways that you can do that, and the easiest ways that you can do that for working smarter, not harder, having sub plan templates having an emergency sub plan templates for monday through friday with your current schedule with all your descriptions of your routines procedures that way you can simply just edit out the activities switch out the activities that you’re going to be doing everything else stays the same saves you so much time i literally don’t know what i was thinking when i was first teaching where i would make sub plans from scratch each and every time. Like why? Just why? I saved just so much time by working off my emergency sub plans. I also have a sub binder that has detailed information for subs that want it to have about behavior and classroom management, emergencies, dismissal. And I have a sub tub with grab and go activities. It’s great for me. It’s great for my teammates and my assistant if I’m out unexpectedly. And it’s great for subs because they are easy to use activities. They are not activities that I expect amazing things from the students or that I expect to have completed a certain way. They’re just sort of more open-ended, casual activities that still practice the learning that the kids are doing in the class.
[10:00] And finally, the other best way to help manage when you have a substitute is a simple switch in language. I call them guest teachers.
[10:10] So the kids hear that they are, in fact, a teacher and that they should be valued as a teacher and respected as a teacher. And they kids need, you know, they learn that they need to listen to all teachers and that includes guest teachers. But one of the things you can do when you’re starting out the year is have a lesson with your students on what a guest teacher is and why you might have it. When you’re teaching kindergarten, kids may not have ever experienced substitute teachers before. And in their minds, you are always going to be there for them. And one day they’re going to come to school and you’re not going to be there and their whole little world is going to be thrown off. So it’s really good to prepare them for the fact that teachers sometimes can’t be at school.
[10:53] Sometimes they’re sick or they have an appointment or they have a meeting or they have family to see or something to do. And when that happens, you’re going to have a guest teacher. And then I like to read a book that kind of showcases this, like Miss Bendergarten stays home, or Miss Nelson is missing, or there’s a Pete the Cat one where his mom is a substitute teacher. That’s a quick one. But I like to read one of those and then talk about like how guest teachers are important, and they are teachers just like everyone else, but they might not know the routines of the classroom and that kids will have to be flexible when they have a guest teacher, but that kids can also help the guest teachers understand what are the routines of the classroom. And then the class makes a guest teacher notebook, a guest teacher book, where each kid writes a page, mostly they’re drawing, and then I come around and write their words for them about the different parts of the day and the different routines.
[11:53] So maybe the kid will say, after morning playtime, we come to the rug and sit in a circle for morning meeting. And then another kid might write, when we go to our tables for reading, we get out our book bags and we read all the books in our book bag. Whatever the routine is, you know, I try to have it so that all the different parts of the day are covered and that they’re not overlapping too much. But I also try to go with what the kids are saying. But if they can’t come up with something, that’s when I’ll encourage them to think of something that hasn’t been talked about yet from the day. After they make that book, when I do have a day where I am going to be out, I have the guest teacher start the morning meeting by reading that book. And not only does that give helpful information to the guest teacher, but it shows the kids, hey, just because we have a guest teacher, it doesn’t mean that everything’s changing. These are our routines for our classroom.
[12:45] They’re staying the same, and the guest teacher now is aware of them. It really reduces a lot of misbehaviors on the kid’s end when there’s a guest teacher. It’s not a magic fix, but it is a great strategy that has helped reduce misbehaviors.
[12:59] And the other thing is the first time you are going to be out, if you have a warning, it is good to give the kids a heads up. Obviously, make your own decision about that. But when I know ahead of time I’m going to be out, I do try to give kids the heads up so that they’re mentally prepared for the fact that they’re not going to see me when they walk in in the morning. They’re going to see a guest teacher and it will be OK. And yes, it might be a little different. We might be flexible and the guest teacher will read the guest teacher book so they’ll hear our routines, but we might have to help them a little bit. So I try to give them that heads up. And for the very first time that I’m out, I do try to give the parents a heads up too. I don’t feel the need to tell the parents every time I’m going to be out because there’s times when you’re sick and you’re just not sending emails and that’s okay. Some people do, but definitely the first time, if I can, I try to give the warning the heads up so that they can talk to their kids about it and be prepared.
[13:49] So those are my tips on how to work smarter, not harder when planning for a substitute or a guest teacher.
[13:55] Let me know. Send me an Instagram message at Kindergarten Cafe with the code word SUB. Let me know which one you like the best, which one you want to try. And definitely check out the Subtub bundle if you want to make your life a lot easier and have those emergency sub plans ready to go, the sub binder ready to go, everything taken care of, all the activities. You’ll be good to go. So check out that bundle. The link is in the show notes. And our quote of the day is, a girl, six-year-old, asked me, did you teach today? Because you’re wearing a sweater and teachers always wear sweaters.
[14:30] So kids know when you teach and when you don’t teach by whether you wear sweaters.
[14:35] Music.
[14:40] Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources, or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then.