Substitute Teacher Plans That Actually Work
Cover plans written at 6am while ill are never good. Here is how to build a set in advance that works for any day you are away.
Published 2026-09-14 · 4 min read
Cover plans get written in the worst possible circumstances — ill, at six in the morning, trying to remember what you were teaching.
The result is predictable. Vague instructions, work that does not fill the time, and a class that returns unsettled.
The fix is to write them when you are well, once, and keep them ready.
The emergency folder
One folder, kept in an obvious place, containing enough for a full day that works at any point in the year.
Tell someone where it is. A folder nobody can find is not a plan.
What goes in it:
- A class list with anything a stranger needs to know
- The daily timetable including break and lunch times
- A seating plan, if you use one
- Five standalone lessons that need no prior knowledge
- Practical information — fire procedure, who to ask, where things are
Five lessons is the right number. Enough for a full day with something spare. Any more and you will not maintain it.
What makes a lesson work for cover
Standalone lessons are a different thing from your normal teaching.
It must not depend on last lesson. A supply teacher cannot pick up a sequence.
Instructions must be complete. Everything a competent person who does not know your class needs, written down. What to say, what pupils do, how long, what happens when they finish.
All materials ready or trivially printable. "There is a worksheet somewhere on the shared drive" is not a plan.
It must genuinely fill the time. Underestimating is the most common failure. A twenty-minute task in a fifty-minute lesson produces the problem the plan was meant to prevent.
It must work at a range of abilities. With an extension that is genuinely extending, not just more of the same.
Good candidates: extended writing from a prompt, reading comprehension, a review of something taught weeks ago, a structured problem-solving task, silent reading with a written response.
What a supply teacher actually needs to know
More practical than most cover notes provide.
Who needs what. Not diagnoses — practical facts. "Sam needs instructions repeated individually." "Maya has a card for leaving the room, this is agreed." "Do not seat Tom and Jordan together."
Be careful and be brief. Write what someone needs to manage the day, nothing more. Sensitive information should not sit in a folder a stranger reads — if something genuinely needs communicating, that is a conversation for a colleague to have.
How your routines work. How pupils get your attention, how they line up, what happens at the end of a lesson. A supply teacher enforcing different routines than usual creates friction all day.
Who to ask. Name and room of the teacher next door. That is the single most useful line in any cover folder.
Where things are. Paper, spare pencils, the whiteboard pens that work.
The one-page front sheet
Everything above, compressed onto one page at the front of the folder. Nobody reads a ten-page pack at eight in the morning.
The front sheet is the only thing you can rely on being read. Everything else is reference.
Keep it to: timetable, the four or five pupils who need a note, who to ask, where things are, and which lesson to use.
Planned absence is different
For a course or an appointment, you can do better than emergency plans.
Continue the sequence. Leave the actual next lesson with detailed instructions. Say clearly what pupils should have produced by the end.
Leave a way to find out what happened. A note asking the supply teacher to write three lines — what was covered, what was not, anything that went wrong. Returning without knowing what happened costs you a day catching up.
Keeping it current
The emergency folder decays. Class lists change, pupils move, routines evolve.
Check it every half term. Five minutes. Update the class list, check the lessons are still appropriate for where the class is.
Replace a lesson if you use one. Otherwise the folder empties.
Update the pupil notes as they change. Out-of-date information about a child is worse than none.
What to leave out
Anything requiring your judgement. "Use your discretion about the group work" means a supply teacher deciding something they lack context to decide.
Anything requiring specific subject expertise you cannot assume. Cover teachers may not be subject specialists.
Anything with equipment that needs setting up. It will not happen and the lesson collapses.
Detailed behaviour management instructions. A supply teacher cannot run your system. Keep it to the practical: how pupils get attention, what happens when someone struggles.
What you get back
Set this up once and it pays every time.
You stop writing plans while ill, which is the worst version of the task. Your class gets a day that works rather than a holding pattern. The supply teacher gets what they need, which makes them willing to come back.
An hour of preparation, once. It covers every absence for the rest of the year.