A Substitute Teacher’s Bag Of Tricks

You really need to keep a bag of tricks at all times, and keep adding to the bag as time goes on. A substitute teacher’s bag of tricks is a collection of materials you can use in class when students need something extra to do, or gets restless, or you use all the permanent teacher left behind for you that day.

Here are some suggestions for students who talk too much or get bored (these suggestions will depend upon which grade you are teaching; prepare your materials to meet the demands for each grade level):

• A list of assignments that can be listed by number on the chalk or white board. When a student needs something new, turn his or her attention to one of the numbered items on the board.

Examples of these items:

• Find the meanings of words (have your list of words on the board)
• Locate the titles and names of the person’s in the President’s cabinet.
• Find the name of the head of state in Germany, France, Russia and Britain.
• Write one paragraph about any past president of the United States.
• Write one paragraph about any past First Lady of the United States.
• Write your numbers from 1 to 100 (place the child’s desk in a different area of the room away from the distraction).
• Name five important areas of daily nutritionn • Where is the tallest mountain in the world (give the child a resource to look up the answer)
• How many bones are there in a person’s foot? (provide a reference for answering the question)

Give a test. Have your students write down a short paragraph that you dictate to them. Ask a student to collect all the papers. Ask another student to redistribute the tests in the opposite order they were collected. Ask each student to evaluate the paper they receive. How neat is the handwriting? Are there spelling errors? Is the paragraph dictated complete? How are punctuation, capitalization and neatness? Discuss improvement of papers that are determined to need improvement. Display on your board the best papers. Determine a winning paper and give a prize. Now ask the students would they like to try another paragraph and try to make the improvements noted in your discussion.

Visit the URL address in this article to other internet resources where you will find test and quizzes to include in your bag of tricks.

Challenge your class with puzzles. Give the answer at the end of the day. Some examples of these from “Lateral Thinking Puzzlers” by Paul Sloane, New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 1991 are:

• Level Easy: There were two Americans waiting at the entrance to the British Museum. One of them was the father of the other one’s son. How could this be so? (Answer: They were husband and wife.)
• Level Moderate: A woman had two sons who were born in the same hour of the same day in the same year, but they were not twins. How could this be so? (Answer: They were two of a set of triplets.)

Visit the URL in resource box of this article to find other resources for mind puzzles.

You can also prepare word search puzzles to carry in your bag of tricks. This can be used with one or more students. The word list can be drawn from subjects such as rules of punctuation or capitalization, or they can be words of a wise saying. The URL in the resource box of this article will provide you with places you can find word search puzzles.

This article is FREE to publish with the resource box.nn© 2007 Connie Limon All Rights Reservedn