Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Sub Binder for Life's Emergencies

I am pretty embarrassed about this confession: I haven't had a sub binder until just now. For some of you that may not seem like such a deep, dark secret, but those of you who have been following me over my blogging career, know just how earth-shattering that is. You see, I was (am still am) Sub Hub and blogged all the time about being prepared for a sub. I even sell two different lines of emergency sub plans in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. But did I use either one of them? No (hanging my head in shame). Just file that one under the "do as I say, not as I do" category.


This Spring Break, I decided to remedy that and show you all just how easy it was to get things in order. Now, I used a couple of my own products, but you can use whatever you like and works for you. The two I used were: Just Add Paper: Fourth Grade (and I have these plans for K-5) and Sub Forms for Teachers (and I only used the pages that worked for my school).

First, I filled out the Sub Forms for Teachers with information for my class this year and printed those out.


Then, I printed out multiple copies of the Daily Summary Form that is also in the Sub Forms for Teachers.

Next, I went to my gradebook and printed several copies of my class attendance list.

I also printed out the Just Add Paper: Fourth Grade Emergency Sub Plans.


Finally, I put them all in a binder with a cute cover and dividers.



This will be somewhere in my classroom that is easily accessible, so if there is an emergency, a sub will at least have some basic information and some things to get started, if not get through the whole day. All they need to add to this is a picture book (which there are numerous choices in my classroom library) and paper (which is out in a visible location in my classroom).

Of course, best case scenario is to write up sub plans continuing your scope and sequence, and I will continue to do that if at all possible (even if it's in the middle of the night). But now, I have some peace of mind that if something were to happen and I couldn't write plans in the middle of the night and email them to my awesome teammates, that my classroom and students would still be taken care of.

So now you can "do as I do" as well as "do what I say" and always be prepared for life's emergencies.