Filling Lesson Plan Gaps

State testing. Field trips. Weird last-minute assembly schedules that turn your day upside down. No matter how well a teacher prepares, holes will appear in your schedule. What to do? Here are the materials – all stand-alone filler lessons that won’t feel like fluff – to help you fill those gaps:

How much instructional time do you need to fill?

5-10 minutes:
• Brain teasers
• Three of a kind
• WordADDiction

10-15 minutes:
• Don’t panic! (dictionary game)
• Commonly confused words
• Fine art analysis (19 options)

15-30 minutes:
• Analogies (remember these? huge:vast::cute:adorable)
• Micro-fiction/2-sentence storytelling
• Life lessons from literature

30-60 minutes:
• Twilight Zone analysis (5 options)
• Andy Weir’s short story, “The Egg”
• Jason Reynolds’ speech to Lesley U. grads
• Listen & learn podcast lesson (11 options)
• Author bio. research grid (so, so many of these – I probably have the writer you need)
• Watch Mister Rogers use rhetorical tools to sway a Congressional hearing
• Birds aren’t real (modern satire)
• What’s up in the world? (current events)
• How to read (and create!) an editorial cartoon
• Should we kill spiders in our homes? (real-world rhetoric)