Chemistry Emergency Sub Plans - 5 Days No Prep Print and Go Reading Worksheets

Five full days of substitute-ready high-school chemistry in one no-prep download, built for the problem that makes a chemistry absence hard: the person covering your room almost certainly cannot teach the content, and chemistry is the subject where a well-meaning wrong answer does real damage. Nothing here asks them to teach. Each day is an original nonfiction reading with every answer on the handout, followed by a page that checks its own answers, and a run sheet at the front tells the substitute exactly what to hand out and what to print. The five days run the course in order — atomic structure and the periodic table, bonding, reactions and stoichiometry, states and solutions and gases, acids and bases and energy — so this is a week of coursework rather than a folder of activities. That is about $2.59 a day, and you come back to a complete set of answer keys and a class that kept working.

WHAT'S INCLUDED

- Sub & Teacher Notes run sheet (what to hand out each day, what to print, and why the substitute does not need to grade anything)

- 5 days of student work, two pages per day (69 questions total)

- 5 original nonfiction readings written for this packet, one per day

- 5 complete answer keys, one per day

- Single 17-page PDF: run sheet and student pages first (pages 1-11), an "Answer Keys" divider on page 12, then the keys (pages 13-17) -- print pages 1-11 to hand out the whole week without printing the keys

- PDF bookmarks for one-click navigation by day

- US Letter, low-ink, two-sided printable

WHY A SUBSTITUTE CAN ACTUALLY RUN THIS

- Every question is answered by the reading on the same handout, so a stuck student re-reads the passage instead of asking the sub a subject question

- Every second page checks itself -- answers pair off, spell out a phrase, or fall into a sequence, so a wrong answer is caught by the student, not adjudicated by the sub

- Every day has an "if you finish early" challenge, so nobody runs out of work

- No device, textbook, login, or internet needed

THE 5 DAYS

1. Atomic Structure and the Periodic Table -- subatomic particles, isotopes, electron arrangement, and periodic trends (14 questions, answer match)

2. Bonding and Nomenclature -- ionic versus covalent bonding, naming compounds, molecular shape, and the forces between molecules (14 questions, word decoder)

3. Reactions and Stoichiometry -- reaction types, balancing equations, the mole, mole ratios, and limiting reactants (13 questions, sequence path)

4. States of Matter, Solutions and Gas Behavior -- the particle model, phase changes, concentration and solubility, and the gas laws (14 questions, word decoder)

5. Acids, Bases and Thermochemistry -- pH, neutralization, exothermic and endothermic change, and energy diagrams (14 questions, answer match)

Each day stands alone, so they can run in any order or be pulled one at a time.

PERFECT FOR

- Emergency and planned substitute days in Chemistry (grades 9-12)

- Planned absences, professional development days, and testing weeks when you are pulled to proctor

- Review before a test, the first week of school, or the day before a break

- Homeschool families working through Chemistry

STANDARDS TOUCHED

NGSS high-school physical science, claimed at DISCIPLINARY CORE IDEA level: PS1.A (structure and properties of matter — Day 1's subatomic particles, isotopes, electron arrangement and periodic trends, and Day 2's ionic and covalent bonding, molecular shape and intermolecular forces), PS1.B (chemical reactions — Day 3's reaction types, balancing, the mole, mole ratios and limiting reactants, plus Day 5's neutralization), PS3.A (definitions of energy — Day 4's particle model, in which temperature is defined as the average kinetic energy of the particles) and PS3.D (energy in chemical processes — Day 5's exothermic and endothermic change, activation energy and catalysis), under the topics HS-PS1 and HS-PS3. The NGSS PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS themselves are deliberately NOT claimed: a reading-and-questions packet does not have students use the periodic table as a model to predict outcomes, plan an investigation, construct an explanation from data or use mathematical representations, which is what those codes require, so this packet supports them rather than assessing them. HS-PS1-8 (nuclear processes) is not reached at all — isotopes appear here only as a difference in neutron count, with no fission, fusion or decay. CCSS ELA/Literacy in Science and Technical Subjects: RST.9-10.1 on all five questions each day that are answered from the day's own text — the three literal questions and the two inferential ones, every one of which cites the passage rather than prior knowledge — and RST.9-10.4 on the daily vocabulary-in-context question, which names the paragraph the term sits in. Each is earned by a recurring slot rather than a one-off. RST.9-10.2 is NOT claimed: no day asks the student to determine a passage's central idea or to summarize it, and the summary is half of what that code requires. RST.9-10.7 is NOT claimed either — no day carries a diagram, chart or data set. No state standards: this sells nationally, and a code the content does not carry is worse than a code left off.

FROM RESPONSE RESOURCES

More no-prep worksheets and sub plans are available from Response Resources -- same practical, ready-to-print format.

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