Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Walk into a substitute teaching assignment with practical strategies for keeping the day organized, productive, and positive. This collection gathers 55 suggestions from educators and other teaching resources, covering everything from arriving early and following the classroom teacher's plans to taking attendance, managing behavior, finding student helpers, preparing backup activities, and leaving detailed feedback. Ideas for filling unexpected extra time include math activities, educational games, collaborative art, team-building activities, virtual field trips, read-alouds, and short "sponge activities." Substitute teachers will also find practical suggestions for assembling a supply bag, working with classroom aides, maintaining established seating arrangements, and documenting student accomplishments.
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tag(s): Teacher Utilities (234), substitutes (33)

Substitute Teachers Lounge is a podcast created for substitute teachers and the educators who work alongside them. It features 300+ episodes of practical advice, personal stories, and candid conversations about life in K-12 classrooms. Topics include handling challenging student behavior, adjusting to different grade levels, following (or bending) a teacher's plans, and what subs wish teachers knew. The podcast also includes interviews with teachers, subs, and even elementary students. Listeners can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

tag(s): classroom management (155), professional development (317), podcasts (190), substitutes (33), behavior (51)

Arcade by Padlet is a free online collection of AI-powered tools designed to help teachers quickly create classroom materials, including quizzes, worksheets, lesson plans, and interactive learning games. The site allows educators to generate activities like flashcards, matching games, fill-in-the-blank exercises, sorting tasks, and sequencing challenges that students can complete online or print for offline use. Teachers enter a topic, grade level, or learning goal, and the tool automatically creates customizable activities to share with students through a link. Arcade is part of the Padlet, reviewed here, ecosystem, which supports collaborative and creative learning by allowing users to organize and share content in an easy-to-use digital space.

tag(s): game making (58), game based learning (294), artificial intelligence (371), Teacher Utilities (234), quiz (57), flash cards (44), worksheets (72), matching (9), sequencing (22), puzzles (177), crosswords (25), study aid (171)

Classroom Zen offers several tools to create a calming, relaxing atmosphere in the classroom. Choose from the categories of noise management, breathing, brain breaks, and typing practice. Begin your day with the Morning Warm-up with Mio, a daily show that lets classes choose topics to get your day off on a good note. Topics include the joke of the day, the wonders of science, the math minute, and more. Noise management tools include a noise monitor from Sleepy Mio and relaxing mountain and desert backgrounds that monitor classroom noise. Additional resources include breathing and mindfulness techniques and quick brain-break activities.

tag(s): classroom management (155), social and emotional learning (235), emotions (82), Teacher Utilities (234)

Create lesson plans quickly using Insta-Lesson--no registration required. Although any educator can use this tool, the creators designed it to help create substitute plans, complete makeup work, and develop enrichment or remediation activities. Start by adding a lesson topic to begin planning, then select a grade level, and optionally include details such as the learning standard and lesson length. Choose from two options to generate your lesson. The first option builds a lesson through guided steps, while the second option quickly generates a lesson using the information you have already added. When finished, Insta-Lesson sends the completed lesson, teacher guide, and slide presentation to your email.

tag(s): artificial intelligence (371), Teacher Utilities (234), substitutes (33)

This site offers a wide variety of virtual math manipulatives that are useful in many situations. Select from virtual dice, number lines, place value disks, and much more. It even includes play money from several locations around the world! Many of the virtual manipulatives include interactive content to adjust settings, change color, and suggestions for use. Most items also include a link to further explanation of how to teach the content along with links to printables and worksheets. This site would be a good one to leave for your substitute to use; it's high-interest, no sign-in required, has thorough directions, and some include worksheets.
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tag(s): substitutes (33), tangrams (10), charts and graphs (183), measurement (123), money (112), number lines (32), number sense (75), place value (42), decimals (90), fractions (173)

Wayground (formerly Quizizz) is a free assessment tool that includes much more than quizzes. Quickly create assessments, lessons, and interactive videos using your materials or those from the site's library. Choose from the delivery of activities in live mode or the student-paced feature. Additional features, including a dyslexia font, options for reduced answer options, and translation tools support special needs and diverse learners. After signing in to your Wayground account, choose from the options on the dashboard to explore options available in the library, add a class, or use AI to create activities. Choose the "Create" link to build assessments, lessons, reading passages, and flashcards. Assign activities directly to Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, or other Learning Management Systems. In addition, students can access Wayground using the link or join code provided after assigning the activity.

tag(s): differentiation (105), DAT device agnostic tool (135), gamified learning (61), quiz (57), quizzes (83), polls and surveys (44), spanish (110), artificial intelligence (371), flash cards (44), study aid (171)

Use this free slide-based multimedia app to put lessons and other material on any web browser OR iOs and Android devices. Build your presentations using pre-made templates. The site does offer ready-made presentations (some free). The interactive, pre-made videos and text presentations are from Ted-Ed, Khan Academy, Nearpod, and others. Some include questions to answer as you work through the presentations. What is the best part of Nearpod? There are now three different presentation modes.

When in the "live presentation" mode (in person or remote web conferencing), teachers control the lesson's pace, and students do not move to the next screen until advanced by the teacher. With the "student pace" mode, students progress through independently, whether at home or in class. The third mode is "front of the class;" you project your presentation, and the students do not use their devices. Use the teacher version of the app to push out the presentation to your students. For the first two modes, every student uses their own student app to follow the screens and answer the questions. This provides immediate feedback about every student. The feedback can be emailed to the teacher for later review. This formative assessment tool is invaluable and a unique part of the app. The tool also includes drawing for students to work out problems. Teachers can identify students who are not "on task" and not working within the app when a little red light pops up. Absent students can complete the assignment at home.

The free version of Nearpod for Educators is called Silver; you get 100 MB of storage, 40 students per session/lesson, access to standard formative assessments features, pre-made interactive lessons up to your storage limit, pre-made interactive videos up to your storage limit, create interactive videos, lessons, and activities, upload PDF, PPT, and Google slides, and more. Again, how many lessons and videos will depend on your storage.

tag(s): differentiation (105), Learning Management Systems (19), DAT device agnostic tool (135), multimedia (69), slides (40), Online Learning (35), assessment (144), classroom management (155), Teacher Utilities (234), teaching strategies (94), remote learning (33), Formative Assessment (52), gamified learning (61), personalized learning (13), playlists (7)

EZSchool is an educational portal that contains EZ worksheets, interactives, online study tools, and tutorials. Although this site is "busy" with clutter from some related advertisements, it is easy to navigate by grade level, subject, or more specific topics such as grammar, writing, and vocabulary for English, or word problems, geometry, and algebra for math, biology and chemistry for science, as well as Spanish, Japanese, and Hindi language activities. There are also SAT/PSAT practice questions with detailed answers. All materials are free to use, print, and distribute for use in the classroom or at home. The website is frequently updated with new activities. Weekly updates to the site are offered on the home page.
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tag(s): study aid (171), grammar (143), japan (61), japanese (54), spanish (110), vocabulary (260), writing (301), substitutes (33)