4 Simple Steps to Stress Free Relief Teaching

The alternative title floated for this blog post was “How to be the Most Prepared, Most Relaxed, Most Awesome Relief Teacher in the World” but we figured that was a little too verbose. However, if you’re a relief teacher who has made it past the lofty promise in that first sentence, keep reading! You can totally be prepared, relaxed and awesome with these easy and actionable relief teaching tips and ideas.

This post is going to show you what you can do to ensure that receiving a phone call twenty minutes before school starts doesn’t cause you any stress at all! That when you’re told “I’m not exactly sure what class you’ll have today”, you can reply “that’s okay!” with authentic calm instead of actually freaking out in anticipation the whole way to school.

Relief Teaching Tips

Our article “Relief Teaching Tips and Advice” gives you a succinct list of things to think about in preparation for work as a relief teacher. The first tip on the list is “come prepared”, which is what this blog post will help you with.

While it’s true that relief teachers rarely take home marking, do reporting nor have the same level of ongoing planning obligations, you still need to spend some time preparing. This isn’t just so that you can feel less anxious about casual teaching work (although that’s a massive bonus!), but also so that the students in your care are engaged in learning (and happy to be so!) when you are their relief teacher for the day.

How to Prepare for Relief Teaching Days

There will be days when the class you’re attending has no daily plan. At the beginning of the year, get yourself organised to ensure this doesn’t affect you or the students on those ‘unplanned’ days.

(1) Print & Copy Full Day Plans and Resources for All Year Levels

We’ve created a huge number of full day plans to make this super easy! In our Relief Teaching Resource Collection, you’ll find six different full-day plans for every year level from Foundation to 6. Each plan contains activities and resources for a ‘Morning Session’, ‘Middle Session’ and ‘Afternoon Session’.

• Simply print out each plan and prepare a folder for each year level and plan version.
• Make extra copies of the “Relief Teaching Day Feedback Form” to keep in the front of each folder so you don’t run out even when using the same folder multiple times.
• Photocopy class sets of any worksheet resources needed in each plan.
• Laminate any of the resources you can use repeatedly (such as bingo cards, task cards, and writing prompt cards).
• Store all of the relief teaching lesson plans, worksheets and resources in the folders.

Here’s a small selection of the printable relief teaching resources available to Teach Starter members.

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(2) Prepare Your Relief Teaching Toolkit

As a primary or elementary school relief teacher, it will make your day a lot easier if you have access to the kind of physical resources and materials you prefer to use in the classroom. Rather than hoping that the classroom you’re going into has what you need (and in a place where you can find it!), prepare these yourself.

Consider having these resources packed in containers or a bag ready to go.

Student Resources

• dice
• playing cards
• paddle pop sticks
• dominos
• puppets
• picture books
• origami paper

Teacher Organisation Resources

• whiteboard markers and eraser
• pens, correction tape, pencils and eraser
• a stopwatch or timer
• post-it notes
• sticky labels for name tags
• stickers

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(3) Prepare Your Favourite Games and Resources

The Relief Teaching Resource Packs are great, but you should also prepare some of your other favourite games and resources ready to go! We’d suggest storing these in lower years, middle years and upper years containers or bags ready for you to grab and go.

These resources are excellent for relief teaching days:

‘I Have, Who Has’ Games

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Bingo

We have over 50 resources in our classroom Bingo collection! You can look at all of our printable bingo games, and choose the one that you think will be the biggest hit with kids.

Task Cards

Laminate a variety of task cards and store them on hinged card rings. You could keep each on another card ring or key ring to have a stash of lower years, a middle year, and an upper year ready to go.

Select sets of task cards with activities that can be completed with resources you know you’ll have access to (e.g. literature task cards that can be used with any picture book in the classroom or a book you bring)

Here are some of our favourites for each age group:

Lower Years Task Cards

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Middle Years Task Cards

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Upper Years Task Cards

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(4) Store in Your Car

Keep the folders and resources you have prepared in a box, crate or car boot organiser. This means that if you get a late call, or you are going to school without knowing which class you will have that day, you’ll still be able to grab what you need as soon as you find out!

Get your hands on a suitably huge bag you can fill with the resources you need that day. We LOVE these handmade Teacher Carry Alls from High Tea Vintage (who are making a men’s teaching bag soon, too!)

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Helpful Links for Relief Teaching Ideas

So! Once you’ve got all of the ‘stuff’ organised, it’s time to ready your mind for the actions you’ll take that day. Read through some of the following posts to prepare yourself for a day of substitute teaching.

• Amazing Relief Teaching Plans and Activity Ideas
• Relief Teaching Tips for Australian Teachers

You can also check out the complete Teach Starter Relief Teaching Resource collection here: