Lesson 1: Solve a Substitute Teacher Mystery
Students work in small groups, first reading the backstory and then examining a collection of evidence connected to different suspects. They’ll encounter an attendance record, email, sticky note, text message conversation, faculty memo, student petition, suspicious paper airplane, and more. Each new piece of evidence gives them another opportunity to make inferences, connect details, and eliminate suspects based on what they can actually prove.
I especially like this type of activity for a sub day because students are practicing close reading, finding text evidence, and inference skills, but to them, it feels like they’re trying to crack a case. A graphic organizer helps groups keep track of the clues and suspects as they work, so there’s also plenty of structure to keep everyone on task while you’re gone.
Once groups have made their final predictions, the substitute uses the presentation to reveal the culprit and go through the evidence that proves or eliminates each suspect. Everything gets reviewed before the end of class, and students get the satisfaction of finding out whether they solved the mystery!
Lesson 2: Investigate the Missing Teacher
Another way to have some fun with your absence is to make it the entire premise of the lesson! With this Missing Teacher Substitute Lesson, students arrive to discover that their teacher is mysteriously absent. The principal needs help figuring out what happened, so your students have officially been put in charge of the investigation.
They begin by creating a Missing Teacher poster. Along with drawing a picture of you, they include details about your appearance, places you might be found, things you often say, what you’re likely doing, and what someone should do if they find you. You may discover when you return that your students have been paying much closer attention to your habits and favorite sayings than you realized.
Since this one is all about creative writing and imagination, there aren’t right-or-wrong answers waiting to be graded. Instead, you get to come back to some pretty entertaining theories about where you’ve been! Teachers who have used this lesson often say that reading and sharing the responses afterward is one of the best parts.
Lesson 3: Try a Grammar Challenge
For example, in my Free Commas in a Series Grammar Challenge, students first learn or review the comma rule and then find themselves trapped inside a Mayan pyramid. To escape, they work in teams to find and correct comma errors in a passage. Their answers reveal the path they need to take through the pyramid without setting off any traps!
The setup is pretty simple:
- Teach or review the skill. Have the substitute use a short mini lesson to introduce a grammar concept, such as punctuation, sentence structure, parts of speech, or fragments.
- Give students a challenge. Once students understand the concept, put them into small groups and have them use what they learned to complete a related grammar challenge.
- Review it together. At the end of class, the substitute can go through the challenge with students so they can check their work and clear up any misunderstandings.
I find that adding the challenge makes a BIG difference. Students are still getting meaningful grammar practice, but now they have a problem to solve, a reason to work together, and maybe even a little friendly competition thrown in.
Want to try one out before leaving it for a sub? You can grab one of my grammar challenges for free below!
Lesson 4: Explore the History of Emojis
There’s also a creative extension that works well if you have a longer class or students finish early. Students write a short story but replace as many words or emotions as they can with drawings of emojis. Then, they swap stories with a partner to see if someone else can decipher what they wrote. It’s a fun little challenge, but it also gets students thinking about how we communicate meaning through symbols as well as words.
Lesson 5: Review Figurative Language
Sometimes you don’t need an elaborate lesson for a day away. A straightforward review of something students have already learned can be just as useful, especially when you need a sub plan you can pull together quickly.
This figurative language substitute activity gives students practice identifying six common literary devices: simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, oxymoron, and onomatopoeia. The assignment includes 18 sentences, all centered around substitute-teacher scenarios, and students identify the type of figurative language used in each one. I typically direct the substitute to have students work in pairs and have them compete to get all the answers correct.
I like this one for those truly last-minute absences because there isn’t much for the substitute to explain or manage. Students can work through the examples independently, and then the substitute can use the included answer key to review each one with the class. Students check and correct their own answers, and the lesson is completely wrapped up before they leave.
I hope these ideas take a little work off your plate the next time you need to prepare for a substitute. A sub day doesn’t have to mean leaving busywork for students or coming back to a mountain of grading. With the right activity, students can still get meaningful ELA practice, and you can return to an empty desk.
No worries! The bloggers at The Secondary English Coffee Shop have you covered:
- Literary Terms Review Game Powerpoint by Tracee Orman
- Round-Robin Creative Writing Activity by Nouvelle ELA
- FREE Substitute Teacher Feedback Form by The Classroom Sparrow
