He had a big presentation planned with several LCD projectors and multimedia slides. The man even had puppets. Made out of plastic milk jugs. No, really.

I’m sure you’ve guessed the superintendent’s problem. We teachers sat in the auditorium for over half an hour while he, the panicked media director, the computer guy, and the theater director all tried to make the technology work.

Once they had the equipment working, the superintendent played a clip from the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Apparently the movie’s perils of technology theme was lost on him.

All I could think was, “Plan B. You gotta have a Plan B.”

Sure, you expect technology to work or for the lesson to continue for its 45 minutes, but equipment failures happen and so do fire drills.

In the face of the unpredictable, what should teachers do?

Set up procedures. Yes, the unpredictable happens, but we can at least predict which types of events might occur. Fire drills, lock downs, drug dogs, power failures, tornado drills, bomb threats, hallway incidents, and an out-of-control student all unpredictable disruptions to your class. Even predictable disruptions like Homecoming events, assemblies, and club photo days can cause classroom chaos. How are you expected to teach when the power is out or half the class is in the yearbook room mugging for the camera?

On a peaceful week, maybe the week after the start of a new semester, draft a list of all of the possible interruptions that could happen and how you’d like for your students to behave.

During a fire drill, I’d like my students to huddle together and not mingle with other classes. I want the kids to make eye contact with me when I call their name on my roll sheet. In an ideal world, they’ll be discussing a question from class with one another to earn a participation or extra credit point.

Train your students. We’re teachers. We teach. That’s our strength. So, once you’ve listed the interruptions and your behavior expectations, select one interruption per day and teach your students how you’d like them to behave. Spring the interruption on them, run through the procedure, and offer feedback. Reward good behavior. Correct stragglers.

Develop a Plan B. If you’re a veteran teacher, or a new teacher who is quick on her feet, you might be able to give your students a quick discussion question as they leave the class or develop a Plan B on the fly.

However, it’s nice to have a couple tucked away for unplanned interruptions. When you’re mapping out your unit, develop a Plan B and include it with your lessons. You could try the following approaches:

• High-interest question – an ethical matter, a central debate in your discipline, or a hot topic are good choices
• A puzzle – for some quiet seatwork while you have to stand out in the hallway for a visitor, consider an extra credit puzzle or problem for students to solve
• Stations – During Spirit Week or yearbook photo day, you might consider setting up stations in your room with short activities at each one. Require students to complete three of the five stations. Each additional station is worth extra credit. Students can leave for their photo ops, return, and pick up where they left off with ease and the whole class isn’t disrupted.
• Quiet full-class work – During a lock down, students in my school had to sit quietly along my interior wall, away from the windows and doors. This is a great time to pull out small, personal whiteboards, markers, and review questions. Quiz students and ask them to write their answers on the whiteboards. Reward with participation points.
• Time sponges – when drug dogs came through my school, the class period extended beyond what I’d had planned, so I needed to soak up that time. Fun time sponges include: develop a clean joke about the material we’re studying. Punch lines must contain one vocabulary word; create a tweet (like www.historicaltweets.com) that a person in your discipline might have typed; charades with clues from the unit of study; and or a game of vote with your feet will get kids out of their seats, but still learning. (Vote with your feet: pose a question like, “Would you rather have wind power or would you rather save the birds?” Students move to the bird side of the room or the windmill side of the room and volunteer to answer the question with their opinion.)

Rein ’em in. When the power comes back on or the fire drill is over, you still have to settle your students back into the lesson. When you jot down your unit’s Plan B, write down how you’ll transition from the chaos to the class. A good idea for this is to have students report about the discussions they’ve had and the conclusions they’ve reached. Accountability for the learning activity helps to focus students on the discussion and discourages speculation about who pulled the fire alarm or what happened to the lights.

Do you have a Plan B that works well for you? Please share it with everyone in the comments.

Have these activities prepared in advance, complete with instructions. I put mine on the overhead projector, but you can store them on your computer to project or pass out in a handout, too. If you have a guest or substitute teacher, include a few of these in your substitute teacher binder. He’ll appreciate the help.

Pass the chicken. I’d love to take credit for this, but this sponge activity comes from Education World. At the top of an overhead, write Give Me 5. Create a list of categories from your subject matter. It could be parts of speech, European nations, Spanish irregular verbs, trigonometry formulas, or phyla. Students pass a rubber chicken up and down the rows. Whoever starts the chicken passing must list five things in the first category before the chicken comes back to them. The turn passes to the person who is holding the chicken when the player gives all five answers.

Mad Lib. Mad Libs are the popular children’s word game where players supply parts of speech that fill in blanks in a story. Hand them out to pairs with the instruction to keep the words clean.

Would you rather paragraph. Would you rather graph an equation to solve it or figure it out on paper? Would you rather be a farmer in the 1800’s or a modern-day farmer? Would you rather have a work by DaVinci or a Picasso in your home? You can pose these questions to your class either verbally or on a transparency and ask them to write a paragraph about their choice.

T-chart. You can whip up a good T-chart at a moment’s notice. A T-chart is a classic cross with a subject on each side of the vertical line. Under each subject, students should list qualities that are found in each subject. For example, I might make a T-chart that lists the Capulets on one side and the Montagues on the other. Another possibility might be molds and fungus.

Pipe cleaners. My high school students and I love pipe cleaner sculptures. They’re creative and fun, which makes for a very engaging sponge activity. In an emergency situation, I’d grab the tub of pipe cleaners and toss out an abstract concept that’s linked to the day’s lesson. If I were teaching Romeo and Juliet my concept might be fate. Students model fate using pipe cleaners. Democracy, equality, growth, justice, and strength are all possible concepts. When you’re done dealing with the emergency, a quick show-and-tell of the students’ models can lead to a discussion that links to the lesson. Students, even high school students, love to see their sculptures hang from the ceiling.

Quote. There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness – Franz Kafka. Does your discipline have some great thinkers? Write a few quotes on an overhead transparency. Ask your students to discuss the quote in pairs and then write a paragraph about the quote. The paragraph should include the quote’s literal meaning, the quote’s figurative meaning (if any), why the quote is important to the subject matter, and the student’s opinion of the quote.

Supply the punchline. Clip out interesting one-panel cartoons from the daily newspaper and cut off the punchline from the bottom of the cartoon. With the unit of study in mind, ask students to supply their own punchlines (clean, of course).

SOAP a political cartoon. Clip out political cartoon and ask students to SOAP it – identify the Subject, Occasion, Audience, and Purpose.

Tweet. Twitter limits users to 140 characters – letters, spaces, and punctuation – per tweet. Students tweet, adults tweet, and businesspersons tweet. But what would Shakespeare tweet? How about Abraham Lincoln? Newton? Ask students to tweet in character. Example from www.historicaltweets.com: Accomplishments just earned me title “Alexander the Good.” Must work harder. -11:01 AM August 14, 344 BC from gritter

Art/photos. Artists and photographers show us their view of history through their brushes and lenses. Select a piece of art or photography and display it for the class. What’s happening in the picture? What time period is it from? Why would the artist or photographer select this scene? What comment is the artist or photographer making on society? Do you like the picture? Why/why not?

Ethical question/central question. Every discipline has its debates and ethical concerns. Are text messages and tweets ruining students’ writing and reading skills? Does the use of calculators in math class constitute cheating? Should the United States continue to fund a space program? Pose one of these questions and ask students to discuss it with a partner. Share ideas when the emergency is finished.

Do you have an emergency sponge? Share it in the comments!