My Sub Tub

My Sub Tub

I've seen this idea online a lot, but never did this myself. At the end of this year, I decided that I would have something completely prepared for next year. I had an extra file box at school and decided to make a "sub tub". It's pretty basic and will need class lists, a teacher/student schedule and a seating chart in September, but the "hard work" is done.

I thought long and hard about why I like to have separate substitute plans from my regular plans and the answer is pretty simple. It has nothing to do with the guest teacher in my room and whether or not I trust they will do a good job. It has EVERTYHING to do with the fact that there are many parts of my day that bother me if I miss them. If we are in the middle of a novel, it's very difficult for me to pick up where someone else left off. If I am about to introduce an oober-important skill, the anal-retentiveness perfectionist in me needs to be present to see who gets it/doesn't get it.

So, I decided I would use our district textbook that doesn't get a lot of wear from my students. I'm not against textbooks, but we all know that some stories are quite good but others should come with toothpicks to hold student eyes open. I chose my 7 favorite stories that were all connected to important reading and writing skills to use for my substitute plans. Since I do not have a schedule for next year, I prepared plans for the two grades I teach (6th & 7th) and broke down my 90 minute period into groups of smaller amounts of time. I printed up these plans and stapled them to the outside of a folder that houses all of the necessary photocopies for the whole day.

I photo copied graphic organizers, skill sheets, and vocabulary work activities as well as ONE extra assignment (in case there is extra time) for each class that I teach. I labeled each page with the grade level and if it was the extra assignment, I also wrote "extra" on a note. All work for all three classes for an entire day was placed inside the folder. I labeled each day's worth of plans with "Day 1, Day 2, etc." so if I do miss a day of school, I can easily leave directions to the bin and tell the substitute that he/she should follow Day 1 plans. I also put them in chronological order because one of my favorites is a two-part play that would take more than one day to read.

The folders *just* fit in the bin. The last folder is a copy of all of the originals. At the end of next year, I can photocopy and replace anything that was used in the current year.