Sub Plans are a Cinch with Children’s Lit

• Kayleigh Parker
• Posted 11/21/24
• 0 comments

Making sub plans at the last minute or in advance for a music teacher is hard. You want to have a lesson plan that still hits music concepts or ideas. However, you have no idea if your sub will have enough music experience to complete the lesson. Leaving lesson plans using technology is tricky because the sub might not have the skills to run the lesson or the knowledge to help students with questions.  

Sub Plans that Incorporate Music for the Non-Musical Sub

I use children’s literature. Hundreds of books with musical themes can easily be turned into a sub-plan. Even better, this type of lesson fits within the National Standards!  

Connect: Understanding connections to varied contexts and daily life enhances musicians’ creating, performing, and responding.

How can you ensure that this music book lesson plan will last for your music time? My classes are thirty minutes. To help fill the time, I leave a list of questions for the sub to ask and sometimes a worksheet.  

These are some of my favorite books and lesson ideas I have ready when I cannot be at school.   

The Remarkable Farkle McBride by John Lithgow 

I usually use this with my upper primary general music classes. This book is about a child prodigy who is so good at an instrument that he gets bored and moves on to master another. This book talks about certain instruments along with the family they are a part of, and you can also talk about what a conductor is. For this book, I leave a note about questions for the sub to ask and I leave a music instrument book for students to do. I also incorporate Music: Instruments- Worksheets from Teachers Pay Teachers. 

Do you Do A Didgeridoo? by Nick Page 

This book is great for my lower primary students. It has fun illustrations and rhymes for an instrument that a lot of students do not know about. I usually include a coloring worksheet for students to do like this one: Digeridoo Coloring Page. 

Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuoso by Andrea Davis Pinkey 

Students will learn about jazz artist Ella Fitzgerald’s life, accomplishments, and why she is the queen of scat. This is a longer book, but I leave a worksheet from the Rock and Roll Mystery Grid that features Ella’s name.  

References

Lithgow, J., & Payne, C. F. (2009). The Remarkable Farkle McBride. Paw Prints.  

Page, N., & Baker, S. (2008). Do you do a didgeridoo? Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  

Pinkney, A. D., & Pinkey, B. (2007). Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuoso. Jump at the Sun.