Emergencies happen when you least expect them. Emergency lesson plans outline what you’d like your students to do in case of an unexpected absence. Leaving emergency lesson plans for your classes is important at the beginning of the year. Your school might require they are turned in within a few weeks of starting school. Even if it’s not a requirement, it’s a great idea to plan ahead. Here are 5 suggestions for creating your emergency lesson plans.
- Spread the content out throughout the year – your school might ask for two to five days of emergency lesson plans. Spread out the content so that you don’t leave assignments just from the first few weeks of school or things that will be covered later on in the year. You never know when an emergency will occur so by having the content spread throughout the year, the person substituting for your class will be able to find a suitable assignment for your students.
- Leave a note that the assignment will be collected, no exceptions – if you have to turn to emergency lesson plans, chances are the last thing you want to think about is whether or not your class is behaving at school. Make sure to leave a note for your sub with your emergency lesson plans that all assignments are due at the end of class. This will keep your students on task and motivated to turn in the assignment.
- Don’t leave anything too challenging or too easy – if the assignment is too easy, your students will finish very quickly and they’ll probably have too much down time. Depending on your classroom’s typical behavior, this might be a recipe for disaster. If you leave work that’s too difficult, your students will just give up before even trying, especially if the more academically inclined students in the class find themselves confused all of a sudden. The work should be practice of skills that are within the students’ zone of proximal development.
- Make sure your assignment will last the entire class period – if it’s an hour long class, then you should plan on leaving enough work for about an hour and fifteen minutes. It’s better to leave a bit more work so that students are working all the time. When there’s down time it’s easier for behavior problems to occur. And when you’re out dealing with your own personal issues, you don’t want to find out that your class was a complete chaos because you didn’t leave sufficient work for the students to do.
- Leave a seating chart – there are students that will try to push your substitutes’ buttons. If you include a seating chart, the substitute will know exactly who’s supposed to be in that class. With electronic gradebooks, now there’s a way to include photographs with your seating chart so that your substitute recognizes a student’s face.
Keeping emergency lesson plans updated and in a location that’s easy to find ensures peace of mind during troubling times.
What do you consider when you make your emergency lesson plans for the year? Share it below.
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