Hey kindergarten teachers! I'm curious... how do you prepare for a substitute?

My lesson plans are saturated with Whole Brain Teaching, but I am concerned about a substitute being able to come in and follow my plans. How do you set up your plans to best enable the substitute to implement Whole Brain Teaching while you are gone? Do you have any tricks of the trade or helpful hints you are willing to share?

I am not sure if this is any help, but I use my strongest "leaders" and tell them the day before I am going to be out.

I leave the class yes, lines, lines, lines, seats...papers...and general procedures they know by heart to them.

We are lucky we have retired teachers who come back to our site where they have taught and sub. So if I am lucky I have them come in the day before and do a little show and tell. This way they feel more at ease.

Other than this, my magic hat is empty for now. Let's chip in and help we all need "those days" sick or not!
Annette

I am going to echo what Annette said...Class Leaders. In my classroom I have completely saturated each student with the opportunity to be a class leader. Now I have the wonderful asset of having a teaching assistant in my classroom all day so when I am out, they simply take over. However, on two separate occasions her and I both were out...there was another assistant from another classroom subbing in my class and I simply left instructions for her as to "ask so and so to do this"...the kids pretty much taught the class. Since we won't be teaching anything new on a day I am out...it is review material...and as long as they have an adult there to "guide" them...they can run the class. Just my trick and thought!


Farrah Shipley
WBT
Texas
Kindergarten

I leave very explicit lesson plans. Of course in the beginning of the plan I say~ this is what my kids are used to but please feel free to use what ever system works for you. And then I literally walk them through, step by step, our day. I had the joy of assessing in our midroom recently and I got to listen to a young gentleman go through my plans. It was so cool because he followed it to a tee and the day went extremely smoothly!!! I worried that these type of plans would be annoying or laborous for subs~ but really all I get is lengthy notes on how they loved it (probably I have just been lucky because I could see that there are people who would not be as excited! But even with those subs~ I am sure they appreciate a very clear, well planned and articulated lesson plan because I know one of the chief complaints I hear from subs is that they either had no plan~ or incomplete/ unclear plans.). And in the end I know that the day will not be as I would run it~ as would be the case with a sub no matter what management system I used. So the next day I always go in and do a "WBT Boot Camp" to get my kids "back into shape". Sounds harsh but we have fun with it and they actually love it!