Feeling Sick? It’s Okay to Take the Day
Use Kiddom to Set Students Up for Success When You’re Sick
As summer fades and the weather cools, teachers are stocking up on school supplies like pens, paper, glue sticks, and….tissues? For most teachers, colds and the flu are an unfortunate side effect of working in schools. According to the CDC, the average elementary school student in the U.S. will have 12 bouts of the cold or flu each season from October through May. 😷
It’s not easy for teachers to take a day off and it’s nearly impossible for substitute teachers to seamlessly continue instruction the way you would. The last thing you want to do is leave boring, busy work for students. However, emergencies happen and the worst thing you can do is push yourself and get sicker and/or get everyone else sick too.
Use Kiddom’s Planner to Design Premade Sub Lessons
Planner allows you to create assignments now, which can used when you’re ready. In Planner, add materials, links, or Google drive attachments and directions for your students. When you know you’re feeling under the weather, simply drag the assignment from your Planner to your Timeline and edit it to include any new information or messages you want to include. With these tools, you can prepare interactive, emergency substitute plans in advance and assign them to your students when you realize you’ll need a day in bed with Netflix and some decongestant.
Assign Meaningful Resources Using Kiddom’s Library
Kiddom’s Library contains thousands of free teaching resources from Khan Academy, Zearn, CK-12, PBS Kids and more. Resources include videos, games, podcasts, and interactive activities that can keep your students engaged while you’re away. TEDEd is one great resource for when you can’t be there to teach your students in person. TedED’s videos are curated for a wide variety of subjects, mostly geared towards older students. The videos are engaging and paced for student comprehension, and often include experts in the field to provide a range of perspectives to your students. The best part is that they come with questions and lesson activities, so you can ensure that your students participated while you were away.
Easily Keep Sub Lessons Current and Useful
Kiddom’s library also includes fantastic news resources for you to foster critical media literacy skills. If you haven’t planned ahead, login to Kiddom if you know you’ll need to call out sick and find up-to-date podcasts and articles from Listenwise and Newsela and assign them directly to your class(es). This work will feel relevant to students, and can support a variety of learning styles through audio or text media. With Newsela, you can provide students with articles written at multiple reading levels, too. When you get back, you can hold a class discussion about how your students see these current events impacting their lives!
Make it Personal
They don’t always act like it, but our students miss teachers when they’re absent. Copies of worksheets left for subs send the message that work is impersonal and unimportant. Instead, use our Google Drive integration to draft a letter now reminding students of class expectations and norms when you’re away and some reflection questions about their work in your class with a space for them to respond.
This may not connect directly to your content, but it allows your students time to build the social emotional skill of self-awareness, and gives you insight into how they communicate in writing. You can even attach CASEL’s social emotional learning competencies to the assignment to give students direct feedback on their social emotional development.
We hope you don’t get sick, but if you do, you shouldn’t feel bad about taking the time to get better. Use Kiddom to keep the learning going from the comfort of your couch. Take care!
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