As an educator, being absent from the classroom for even a single day can disrupt the planned instructional sequence and impact student learning. However, by utilizing a high-quality curriculum that is widely adopted, one can tap into a collaborative network to co-create resources that support students effectively. The following guide offers crowd-sourced substitute plans and strategies gathered from educators globally who utilize OpenSciEd materials in their teaching. These suggestions serve as potential approaches or sources of inspiration for crafting new and creative ideas. We are grateful to these educators for generously sharing their expertise and work with us and others. The names of the contributing educators can be found throughout the guide.

An educator’s options regarding substitute lesson plans can vary greatly, depending on where students are in a unit and when the teacher will miss a day. Sometimes, it is possible to leave a lesson plan for the substitute that continues the unit learning or moves it forward a little. Other times, it would be too difficult to leave the unit learning to the substitute, such as when there is a complicated lesson or the absence is an unplanned emergency.

The following guide has three main categories:

• Strategies that continue moving the unit learning forward
• Strategies that have students organize their thinking about the current unit
• Strategies that support general science and engineering learning not necessarily connected to the current unit