Supply Teacher Tips: How to Impress From Day One

Supply teaching is a different skill set from permanent teaching. In a permanent role, you build authority over weeks and months — pupils learn your expectations, your routines, and your boundaries. In supply, you walk into a room full of children who don't know you, may have had ten different supply teachers this term already, and are very good at working out exactly how much they can get away with before you react.

The good news is that the skills that make a great supply teacher are learnable, and the habits that get you rebooked are straightforward once you know what schools are actually looking for. Here's what makes the difference.

Before the day — preparation matters

Confirm your booking details the evening before

If you receive a booking in the afternoon for the following morning, take five minutes that evening to check everything: the school's full address, the start time, the name of the person to report to, the year group or subject, and any notes on the class included in the booking. On Humly, all of this is visible in the booking detail screen.

Do not rely on memory or a quick glance at your phone at 6:45am. Know exactly where you're going and who you're looking for before you go to sleep.

Research the school briefly

Two minutes on the school's website tells you a lot. What's the school's ethos? Is it a faith school? Does it have a specialist provision — SEN unit, language unit, Pupil Referral Unit attached? Are there any values or behaviour frameworks mentioned on the site that you can reference in the classroom? Showing even the smallest awareness of the school's culture when you arrive makes a positive impression on staff.

Prepare a backup activity

Lesson plans left by the absent teacher range from detailed and well-resourced to a single sentence on a Post-it note. Always bring something of your own — a generic activity appropriate to the year group you're covering that you can fall back on if the set work runs short or is inappropriate. It doesn't need to be elaborate. A writing prompt, a problem-solving activity, a discussion task. Having something in your back pocket means you're never standing at the front of a class with nothing to do for twenty minutes.

Pack the right things

• Photo ID and your DBS certificate — schools may ask for these on a first visit
• A pen and notepad for taking register notes and writing your end-of-day handover
• A watch — you can't always see a clock from the front of a classroom
• Any behaviour management resources you find useful (a reward chart, a simple call-and-response signal you use consistently)
• Comfortable shoes — you'll be on your feet all day

The first ten minutes — establishing yourself quickly

How you start the day sets everything that follows. The first interaction with a class — the moment you walk in, introduce yourself, and begin — is the most important moment of a supply day.

Be at the door before the pupils

If at all possible, arrive at your classroom before the class does. Standing at the door to greet pupils as they enter gives you a moment of connection with each child, signals that you are in control of the space, and prevents the chaos of pupils already settled into disruptive patterns before you've said a word.

Ask a staff member or check the booking notes for where pupils line up before entering. If the class is already in the room when you arrive, take a breath, stand at the front with calm confidence, and wait for quiet before you begin.

Introduce yourself clearly and briefly

Tell them your name, write it on the board, and tell them one or two things about how your day is going to run. Not a long speech — pupils don't need your life story. They need to know what your name is, that you know what you're doing, and what will happen if they make good choices today. Keep it to ninety seconds.

Take the register immediately

Taking the register does several things at once: it gives you a name for every face in the room, it establishes a routine and signals that this is a normal school day, and it gives you something to do in those first moments while you're reading the room. Call every name clearly, make eye contact with each pupil as they respond, and start building a mental map of who is where.

Use the school's behaviour system, not your own

Every school has a behaviour management framework — whether it's Class Dojo points, a traffic light system, house points, or something else. Ask a colleague before the lesson starts, or look for visual prompts in the classroom. Using the school's own system signals to pupils that you know how things work here, and it gives you consistent language. Pupils find it harder to argue with "that's a yellow card under your school's system" than with a consequence they've never heard of before.

Managing a class you don't know

Establish your non-negotiables early

You don't need many rules — you need a few clear ones that you enforce consistently from minute one. Most experienced supply teachers settle on three: listen when I or a classmate is talking, stay in your seat unless you have permission to move, treat everyone in this room with respect. State them simply, display them if you can, and refer back to them calmly every time they're tested.

Learn names as fast as you can

Nothing disarms a disruptive pupil quite like being addressed by name. It signals that you're paying attention, that you see them as an individual, and that you're not going to be easy to ignore. Use the register, look at name labels on desks if they exist, and ask politely if you're not sure. Most pupils respond better to being named than to being pointed at.

Narrate the positive

Rather than focusing attention on what's going wrong, narrate what's going right — loudly enough for the rest of the class to hear. "I can see Year 5 are already working through the first question — that's exactly what I asked for." This technique, borrowed from behaviour management training, rewards compliance publicly and makes non-compliance more visible without confrontation.

Pick your battles carefully

On a supply day, you are not going to fix every behavioural issue in the school. You don't have the relationship capital, the history, or the time. Focus on maintaining a learning environment — work happening, noise at a manageable level, no one being unkind to anyone else. Low-level disruption that isn't affecting learning can often be managed with proximity rather than direct challenge. Save your formal interventions for the things that matter.

Know the support system before you need it

Before the lesson starts, ask where the nearest pastoral support is — who do you call if there's a serious incident, and how do you call them? Most schools have a behaviour support system involving a Head of Year, a phase leader, or a dedicated behaviour team. Know what it is before you're standing in front of a class deciding whether to use it. Using support when you need it is not a sign of weakness — it's how good supply teachers avoid situations escalating.

The handover — what to leave at the end of the day

The end-of-day handover is one of the most underrated parts of a supply day. A good handover note takes ten minutes to write and dramatically increases your chances of being requested back.

It doesn't need to be long. One page is plenty. Cover:

• What work was completed in each lesson, and roughly how far the class got
• Any work that wasn't completed, with a note of why (time, difficulty, disruption)
• Names of any pupils who had a particularly good day — staff love hearing this
• Names of any pupils who caused concern, with a brief factual description of what happened (avoid opinion or diagnosis — stick to observable behaviour)
• Anything the returning teacher needs to know: a pupil who was upset, a resource that couldn't be found, a parent who came to the door

Leave the note on the teacher's desk or with the office. It will be read. And it will be remembered.

Getting rebooked — what schools actually look for

Schools don't rebook supply staff because they were entertaining or inspiring. They rebook supply staff who made their day easier. Here's what that actually looks like:

Arrive on time

This sounds obvious. It matters enormously. A supply teacher who arrives five minutes late causes a ripple effect — a class unsupervised, a colleague having to drop what they're doing, a headteacher starting the day frustrated. Be early.

Be visible and easy to work with

Smile at staff. Say please and thank you. Ask where things are rather than hunting through a teacher's desk. Eat lunch in the staffroom rather than the classroom. Be a human being rather than a temporary presence. Schools are communities and supply teachers who engage with that community — even briefly — are remembered positively.

Leave the room as you found it

Chairs tucked in, resources back where you found them, board cleared. This is the lowest possible bar and yet it is regularly not cleared. Leaving a classroom tidy signals respect for the permanent teacher's space and makes you stand out from a significant proportion of the supply staff that school has seen.

Follow up on the platform

On Humly, your profile builds over time based on bookings and school feedback. Keeping your availability accurate, accepting bookings promptly, and completing timesheets on time all contribute to your standing on the platform — which affects how prominently you appear in matching for future roles.