Effective secondary English cover work?

[MrsRoyKent]

Has anyone, anywhere, worked out effective, low-administration, relevant cover plan for English? Maths and Science at ours seem to have nailed it with textbooks inc answers, but despite years of running different plans we always end up snowed under trying to keep up with illness cover, particularly if it is more than a day or two. Staff do set it where they can, but we don’t ask staff if they don’t volunteer.

We are a huge department (22 staff) so this can quickly become unmanageable, particularly whilst currently teaching in bubbles, so work is having to be delivered all over our massive site.

Any ideas gratefully received - anyone got anything that nails it? Thanks in advance!

I find Pobble 365 very useful for emergency cover, but that’s not much help for longer term illness.

Thank you. It’s a minefield English textbooks are typically tricky to apply, and we’re drowning trying to keep up when we have non-specialist staff covering, sometimes without laptops…

Article or text extract, one paragraph on each slide and three comprehension, vocab or language questions per paragraph. Cover clicks through, 5 mins per slide, students answer questions. Slide(s) with answers: students mark own. Final slide has related image and writing prompt. Students work on this for remainder of lesson.

These take very little effort to put together. If everyone in your department agrees to produce 2 or 3 then you have a healthy bank of them for use. Even better if they can be themed in such a way that they are related to the schemes you use (e.g. supernatural, battle and ambition themed cover powerpoints sit in the folder with your Macbeth SoW).

This is fine for short term, but any absence longer than a couple of lessons per SoW really does need to be continuing with the SoW… When it reaches that point we simply set the regular SoW lesson powerpoints as cover and ask the cover staff to do the best they can. They tend to do fine.

Thanks both. Currently meandering through Pobble.

Taking a look at Pobble too! Had never heard of it to be honest. It looks good.

Me either - it’s got some great resources. I’ve just turned one into task sheet. One of our challenges is that our cover staff often don’t have access to a laptop even to display a PowerPoint, but it’s been really quick to turn a Pobble presentation into a useable worksheet. Thanks @AttaGirrrrl!

I do love the idea of having some sets of worksheets printed in advance and in folders in the office ready to go. Going to take it to the dept meeting tomorrow…

I don’t understand how cover staff can’t have access to IT! The Oak National Academy and GLT Curriculum videos have made cover so much easier for us.

My school won’t give external supply teachers a log-in. It’s annoying as anything. They claim it’s a GDPR issue, which seems pretty unlikely given that plenty of other schools use it! Luckily most of our cover goes to the in house cover supervisors. Agree with the Oak Academy recommendation, especially for KS4 Lit.

Ours is an issue with kit, though I suspect GDPR would also be a problem. We just don’t have enough functioning laptops to be able to offer them, I suspect.