Substitute Teacher Lesson Plan Template
A substitute plan is written for someone who has never met your students, does not know where anything is kept, and will make roughly two hundred small decisions before lunch with no context for any of them.
That makes it a different document from your own plan. Your plan is a reminder; this one is a script, and every gap in it becomes a judgement call by someone with no information.
It is also the plan you will most often need at 5:40 in the morning while feeling terrible, which is the argument for writing it now rather than then.
What a substitute needs that you never write down
The medical items are the ones that cannot be omitted under any circumstances, and they belong at the top of the first page rather than in an appendix. Everything else can be worked around; that cannot.
- Where things are — keys, passes, the copier code, the emergency folder, which cupboard has paper.
- The schedule as it actually runs, including duties, and any student who leaves for a service partway through.
- Names of two nearby colleagues and where to find them, plus who to send a student to.
- Medical and safety information the sub must have: allergies, seizure plans, anyone who must not be left unsupervised.
- Two or three reliable students by name — the ones who will honestly tell a stranger where the class had got to.
- The behaviour system in one paragraph, and what a sub is authorised to do.
Write the lesson as a script
The single most common failure in a sub plan is assuming context. "Continue with the fractions unit" is not a plan; it is a request for improvisation from someone with no idea what has been covered.
Give the exact page numbers, the exact worksheet, the exact instructions to read aloud, and what to do when students finish early — which they will, because a class working for a substitute finishes everything in half the time or none of it.
Prefer work that is self-contained and needs no prior lesson. A day of consolidation, a reading task, a structured project session or a review packet all survive a substitute; a lesson introducing a new concept generally does not, and will need reteaching whatever the sub does.
Example substitute plan — one period
Period 3, 10:15–11:05, Grade 7 Science, Room 214. Class list and seating chart attached.
Take attendance on the paper list — the online system will not accept a substitute login. Sofia L. leaves at 10:40 for speech and returns at 11:00; this is expected.
Read aloud: "Today you are finishing the density lab write-up you started on Tuesday. Your data table is in your lab book. You need the conclusion section only."
Hand out the conclusion frame from the blue tray on my desk, one per student. The instructions are on the sheet. Students work independently and quietly; this is not a group task.
If a student says they were absent Tuesday: the completed data set is on the back of the frame, and they use that.
Early finishers: the crossword in the same tray, then silent reading. They may not use devices.
Collect the frames at 11:00 and leave them on my desk. Please write down anyone who did not hand one in.
If anything goes wrong, Ms. Achterberg is next door in 216 and knows the class.
The student names, scores and incidents in this example are invented composites. Nothing here describes a real child.
The emergency folder
Keep a folder that works on any day of the year with no preparation, because the days you most need a sub plan are the days you cannot write one.
It should contain three self-contained lessons per class that need no prior knowledge and no technology, each with enough copies already made. Review material, a reading with comprehension questions and a structured problem set are the reliable formats.
Put the standing information — seating charts, medical notes, schedule, colleague names, procedures — at the front, and refresh that page once a term. The lessons will keep for a year; the seating chart will not.
Tell your department head and the office where the folder is. A perfect emergency folder nobody can find is not an emergency folder.
Behaviour, and what to authorise
Classes test substitutes. That is not a failure of the sub and it is not fixable by a stern note; it is what happens when the person with the relationship is absent.
What helps is being explicit about the boundary. State what the sub may do — move a student, withhold a privilege, send someone to a named colleague — and state clearly what they should not attempt, particularly with any student who has a behaviour plan.
Ask for names rather than judgements: a list of who was helpful and who was not, without interpretation. That gives you something to act on with your own class and does not ask a stranger to assess students they met once.
The day you get back
Read the sub note before the first period, not at the end of the day. It changes what you say in the first two minutes, and the first two minutes are the whole recovery.
Follow up on what was reported, visibly and calmly. A class that sees nothing happen after a bad day with a sub has learned something about substitutes that will cost you next time. A class that sees a proportionate, unemotional consequence has learned something else.
Thank the sub if you can reach them, and note whether you would ask for them again. Good substitutes are scarce, they know which teachers leave usable plans, and they choose their assignments.
Frequently asked questions
Medical and safety notes first, then the schedule as it actually runs, where everything is kept, named colleagues to ask, the behaviour system in one paragraph, and the lesson written as a script with exact pages and instructions.
Far more detailed than your own. Every assumption you leave implicit becomes a judgement call by someone with no context, so give exact instructions to read aloud and say what to do when students finish early.
Self-contained consolidation — a review packet, a structured reading, a write-up of work already started. New concepts generally need reteaching whatever the substitute does, so leaving one wastes the day twice.
Three ready-to-teach lessons per class with copies already made, plus your standing information, kept somewhere the office can find it. It exists for the days you are too unwell to write anything.