Does creating sub plans cause more stress and anxiety than if you had just gone to school instead of enjoying that personal day with your family? Or is your administration requesting a week’s worth of emergency sub plans, because hey you never know when you’ll need to use them? Maybe it is 8pm and you are not feeling well and are in desperate need of a plan for 7am tomorrow. Whatever situation you find yourself in, these 10 sub plans are perfect, especially for a substitute that doesn’t speak Spanish.
Schools are having a tough enough time finding teachers to fill full-time roles, that finding a Spanish-speaking some is few and far between. So, when you’re trying to come up with sub plans, I know that you need plans that are easy for anybody to implement and even easier for your students to follow with very little help. With these 10 lessons, you can have emergency sub plans, plans for a long weekend, or even a low-prep day for you when you’re under the weather but still at school!
1. Student-Created Quizzes
No matter what unit you are on or level you teach, this activity can be used! Simply have all students use the current vocabulary, content, or grammar to create a 10-question quiz for a classmate. They can create multiple-choice, true or false, or short answer questions. Once they are done, they will switch quizzes with a partner who will take their quiz. Then, they should switch back and grade each other’s work.
In the case of a true emergency sub plan, if you don’t have anything printed, students just need a blank piece of paper! Or, you can grab this template for students to use as they create a multiple-choice quiz.
2. Current Events in Spanish-Speaking Countries
With a current event project, you can assign this task over and over again, because there will always be something new going on around the world! Here are some current event worksheets for your students to use as they research events around the Spanish-speaking world. For your novice students, let them research in English, but for advanced students, they can find articles in Spanish. Newsela is a great free website that has an entire collection of Spanish articles made for students.
3. Facts About Spanish-Speaking Countries
Choose one country or a few countries and have your students read facts about the country. For example, they will learn about geography, music, food, the flag, sports, and more! They will report back to you on their findings. With these downloads, your students will get 10 facts about each country (in English or Spanish) and three options of worksheets to complete. This makes for a super easy sub plan with easy-to-follow instructions for both the students and the substitute.
4. VideoEle
VideoEle is a website that has four courses, each with different levels of Spanish videos. All videos come complete with a transcript, work booklet, and answer key. No matter what you’re studying – a grammar concept, a vocabulary list, pronunciation, culture, etc. you’ll find something for every unit here. Students from novice to advanced can watch these videos! Plus, it is very sub-plan friendly, as the workbook is thorough and students follow along with the video. You can either print out the workbook pages, or for a true emergency sub plan, there are digital versions, too!
5. Choice Boards
When you are not with your students, they always tend to have more questions about assignments! It never fails! So, by assigning a choice board, you let them choose the assignments they want to complete. They will choose the assignments that they have the fewest questions about. This will save everybody the headache of instruction confusion or lack of motivation. Plus, if you are not sure how long you will be out for, this is the best assignment. Each day you can tack on one assignment to their required submission. You don’t need a second set of sub plans when you have 16 projects on one document!
Learn how to design and grade your own choice boards here!
6. Research Project
This is one of the easiest sub plans because students do all of the work! You give them some basic guidelines and they find information relating to any Hispanic topic: famous people, countries, animals, holidays, etc. I love giving students a simple worksheet that they fill in as they research, so the expectations are clear. There’s really no way they can mess it up! Here are research posters for Latin American animals, famous Hispanics, and the 7 Wonders of the Hispanic World.
7. Create a Vocabulary Booklet
During a vocabulary-heavy unit, I like to assign vocabulary booklets to my students. This simple task is low-prep for me and low-pressure for students. Students make mini booklets that showcase all of the unit’s terms. It may seem like a mindless task, but by writing the vocabulary words, drawing images, and even writing sentences, they are soaking in the words! Here is a free template for you to print. You’ll just need to calculate how many to print based on your number of students and the number of vocabulary words you want them to complete.
8. Reading Comprehension Tasks
Provide students with a text and reading comprehension questions. This is a classic sub plan and one that allows students to even work together to read and interpret a text. You can even ask students to annotate the text to ensure that they are doing the reading on their own and not copying answers from a friend. Here are my tips for annotation strategies. Grab readings about Hispanic Artists, the 7 Wonders of the Hispanic World, South American capitals, or Latin American animals. Each of these sets has worksheets and comprehension questions that make for the easiest of sub plans!
9. Virtual Field Trips
Let your students explore countries and culture with a virtual field trip! You assign the Google Slides to your students, and they explore Google Earth. They will make stops at famous destinations, dive into a 360 degree map, take pictures, and answer questions. Many teachers have left reviews for these field trips stating that they were perfect sub plans because students could easily follow along and complete the tasks on their own.
10. Instagram Profile
All of our students love using social media, so they will love this project! They will either create an Instagram profile or images for a famous Hispanic, tourist destination, country, etc. with this free template. Or, you can have students look on Instagram and find accounts of famous museums, sports teams, people, etc. and report about their findings.
So take that day off. Don’t stress about creating sub plans because I’ve got you covered! With any of these activities, your students will be engaged, held accountable, and you will only spend a few minutes prepping for that day off!
If your school is struggling to find certified world language substitutes, even for a long-term sub. Or if your school just needs to hire more language teachers, please check out World of Learning Institute. I am a Spanish teacher here, and we provide live virtual instruction in a variety of languages to schools that cannot find a language teacher. We provide comprehensible input instruction, asynchronous courses, as well as live, engaging Zoom sessions!
