The Hawaii public schools started last week. At this point, I haven’t had any calls to substitute teach. So what am I doing now? I’m searching the web for short activities for students – particularly in math and science. One of the things emphasized in the substitute teacher training course was that we should have some handy activities that will make good use of class time if the lessons end early.

That wasn’t such a big deal when I was teaching full time, since I could always begin the next day’s lesson, or add some fun, interesting tangential material to the lesson. But as a substitute I don’t want to step on the toes of the regular teacher by bringing up things he may want to do later – or not at all.

So I need some ” 5 minute activities” for my students. There are lots of Google hits for this, most are pretty obvious. I’ll have to sift through this and see what looks good.

I’m also getting a couple of Martin Gardner’s books from the library. But I’m thinking those are going to be more fun for me than “5 minute activities” for the students. We’ll see.