Substitute Teacher Activities

Substitute teachers should bring activities to fill up time.

Teachers usually leave lesson plans for substitute teachers to follow, but sometimes those lessons do not fill up the entire time span, or equipment fails and the lesson cannot be carried out. It is good for substitutes to have some fall back activities in their bag of tricks for those moments when things do not go as planned or time needs to be filled. These activities can be adapted to work at every grade level.

Twenty Questions

Choose a person, place, or thing and have students try to guess what it is by asking questions with "yes" or "no" answers. Students can only ask up to 20 questions. This game can be played with a whole class, allowing students who guess correctly to choose the next object, or the class can be split into teams. To connect this game to the class curriculum, try and use people, places and things that the students have been studying.

Using the Newspaper

Every time you sub for a teacher, bring a newspaper with you. It can be used for a variety of activities. Choose an interesting news story from the day's paper and read it to the students, allowing opportunities for discussion as you go. Cut out a few comic strips and challenge students to put them back in the correct order. Give each student a letter of the alphabet and ask them to find at least five new words that start with that letter, then challenge them to look the new words up in a dictionary. Give students a pretend $1000 and have them peruse the classified ads figuring out what they could buy.

Hangman

Most classes have vocabulary words or subject-specific words. Play a game of hangman by choosing a vocabulary word and having students guess what it is. To play, draw a line to represent each letter of the word on the board or a large sheet of paper. Above those lines, draw an upside-down J. Have students call out letters that might be in the word. If the letter is in the word, fill it in on the appropriate line. If the letter is not in the word, write it off to the side and draw a head on the upside-down J. For each letter guessed that is not part of the word, continue drawing a stick figure, adding a body, legs, arms, eyes, and a mouth. If the word is not guessed by the time the figure is drawn, the game is over. The student who figures out the mystery word gets to pick the next word.

Read a Book

Bring along a favorite picture book or short story and share it with students, explaining that it is one of your favorite books. Even high school students occasionally like to sit and read a picture book. If you choose a book with a moral or common theme, students can discuss the book and how it relates to their lives. Students can also write a response to the book.

How Many Words?

Choose a vocabulary word or a common long word and challenge students to come up with as many smaller words as possible using only the letters of that word. No proper nouns can be used in this game. If the letter "s" is in the word, students can count the plural form of the word along with the singular form. For example, "teen" and "teens" would both count. Students can work individually or in groups.

References

• Education World: Tips and Resources for Substitute Teachers