Making Standardized Sub Plans Using Google Forms

Even though I am a Level 2 Google Certified Educator, I still want to learn new ways for Google to help me and the teachers I support.  I found this blog post titled "The Magic Automatic Lesson Planner with Google Forms" a while back and finally, last week, had time to try it!

I walked through the process, and while it was great to practice with Autocrat, I didn't know if I would use it as a teacher - or if any of my teachers would.  So I started to think about what I (or others) might need...

And then I realized that substitute plans might be the way to go.  Most of the time is it the same thing over and over, and there are always lots of little details that could get missed. So I started thinking about all the little notes that I added to sub plans, like attendance, collecting papers, and whether or not students can work together.


The form is designed for those that have 3 different preps. Sections can be duplicated or deleted as needed.  (If you add sections, you will need to change the headers in the Google Sheet, so that all of the data can be mapped).  

After I created the form, I created the response sheet.  Since my second and third preps had the same names in the form, I had to update them in the response sheet to 2nd class, 3rd class, etc.  

Next, I had to create my template.  The directions in the blog post are pretty clear, so I won't duplicate them.  Once I got the hang of tags, it was pretty easy.  Once I was finished, I had to run the Autocrat add-on to connect the responses to the template.  I really like that I can create either a Google Doc or a PDF of my plans and if I had a teaching partner, it could be set up to email my partner each time I run Autocrat (ie any time I will need a sub - that way someone has an extra copy!) 

When I was done, I ran my job! Ouila!



Here is the link to the folder where I keep these files.  I definitely think teachers would use this to create sub plans.  I know the checkboxes would have helped me remember all those little things that sometimes I forgot! What do you think?  Would you use it? 



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