Draft the cover-lesson brief for a CRT in ten minutes

Draft the cover-lesson brief for a CRT in ten minutes

It is 6.15am, you cannot swallow, and the class you left in a good spot yesterday now belongs to a CRT you have never met. The two things you will type into Compass under Cover Notes are the difference between the CRT running a real lesson and the CRT running a Netflix period. Most cover notes end up being either "read chapter 5 and answer the questions" or the entire lesson plan you would have taught yourself, which nobody reads. Here is the prompt that lands the middle version, in the ten minutes before you make the call.

The prompt

You are helping me write a cover-lesson brief for a CRT (casual relief teacher) who has never met my class. They may or may not be a specialist in the subject. The brief must fit on ONE A4 page in 11pt, be self-contained, and be usable by a teacher who has ten minutes to read it before the bell.

The goals, in this order:
1. The class does real work that connects to what I taught them yesterday, so I do not lose the week.
2. The CRT is not left to invent the lesson at 8.50am.
3. Nothing in the plan requires my password, my laptop, or a resource only I know how to find.
4. The CRT knows exactly what to leave for me so I can pick up tomorrow.

CONTEXT
- Year level and subject: [e.g. Year 8 Humanities]
- Class size and any composition notes a CRT should know in one line: [e.g. "28 students, three EAL/D who sit together at the back left, two on ILPs for written output, one student who leaves at 10.05 for music"]
- Room, day, period: [e.g. Room 14, Thursday, Period 3]
- What we did yesterday, in two lines: [PASTE]
- What I would have taught today: [PASTE the lesson objective, the tasks, the resources. If I only have dot points, dot points are fine.]
- What resources the CRT actually has access to: [textbook on the shelf, printed worksheets in tray 3, Google Classroom login the class already has, the whiteboard, and NOT my laptop unless I say so]
- What "off-task" looks like for this class: [ONE HONEST LINE. e.g. "phones out under the desk, especially back left" or "loud but working, do not confuse the two"]
- Whether AI and phones are allowed in class today: [YES/NO/CONDITIONAL, one line]
- Names of two students the CRT can rely on as first ports of call: [PSEUDONYMS, one line each on why]

PRODUCE, IN THIS EXACT ORDER. NO PRE-AMBLE. START WITH SECTION 1. TOTAL UNDER 500 WORDS.

1. THE FIVE-LINE ORIENTATION. What the class is doing this fortnight, in language a CRT with no subject background can read in twenty seconds and then explain to the room.

2. THE LESSON, IN THREE MOVES.
   Move 1 (first 10 minutes, do-now): a specific task the students can start without instruction, that connects to yesterday. Written on the board or projected. Include the exact sentence to write on the board.
   Move 2 (25 minutes, main task): the substantive work. Reference only resources the CRT actually has. Include the instructions the CRT should read out, word for word, at the start.
   Move 3 (last 10 minutes, exit ticket): one question, on paper, that the CRT collects and leaves on my desk. Specific enough that when I read the pile tomorrow I can tell who understood and who did not.

3. THE FALLBACK. What the CRT does if the technology fails, the printer is jammed, or half the class refuses to start. One paragraph. Specific and honest. Not "engage them in discussion".

4. WHAT TO LEAVE FOR ME. Three bullet points. The exit tickets, a one-line note on how the class went, and the names of any students the CRT had to redirect more than twice. Written where I will actually see it (Compass, my desk, tray 3, be specific).

5. WHAT NOT TO DO. Two lines. The specific moves that will cost this class a week of goodwill (e.g. "do not give a detention on the first warning, our system is three warnings", "do not let students go to the toilet in pairs during Period 3").

RULES
- Australian English throughout. CRT not "sub". Year 8 not "8th grade". No em-dashes and no en-dashes anywhere. Commas and full stops only.
- Do not open with "Dear CRT" or "Welcome to my class". Start with Section 1.
- Do not tell the CRT to "get to know the students" in a 50-minute period. That is not the task.
- Do not include activities that require me to have set them up in advance (a Kahoot I have not made, a shared doc I have not shared, a video I have not queued).
- If the objective I gave you cannot fit in a 50-minute cover lesson run by a non-specialist, say so in one sentence and propose a narrower version. Do not silently shrink the objective and pretend that was the plan.

What it does well

The three-moves structure (do-now, main task, exit ticket) is what stops the brief being "read the chapter and answer the questions", which is the failure mode most CRT notes end up in. The exit ticket is the piece that lets you actually run the class from home, because on Friday you can look at the pile and know who to pull aside, rather than having lost a lesson to a void you cannot see into. The "what not to do" section is the small piece that saves the CRT from a fight in Week 4 that you have to spend Week 5 repairing.

Where it falls over

The brief is only as good as the answer to "what resources the CRT actually has". If you write "my slide deck", the CRT does not have your slide deck. If you write "textbook chapter 5", they do. Be brutal about what actually lives in the room without you in it. Second, the prompt will produce a beautiful lesson that a specialist CRT could run and a non-specialist will find hard. In practice you rarely know who is walking through the door, so the safe default is: write the brief as though the CRT knows nothing about the subject. A specialist will lift it easily. A non-specialist will survive it.

Try it like this

For a primary class where you have the same CRT most of the time: run the prompt once with a full context block, save the output as a template in Notes on your phone, and each sick day only swap Move 2 for what you actually would have taught. The orientation, the fallback, and the "what not to do" barely change from week to week.

For a VCE class where losing a lesson matters most: paste the exact study design outcome under the objective, and add a line to the CONTEXT block that reads "This class is halfway through SAC preparation and cannot afford a filler lesson." The model will hold the line harder on substance.

If you only have five minutes and are on the phone to the school office: skip the CONTEXT block, paste yesterday's lesson notes and today's objective straight into the prompt, and ask only for Sections 2, 3, and 4. The orientation and the "what not to do" you can send in a second message from bed at 8.30am.

The CRT brief you wrote from bed on a Thursday is the reason your Friday lesson still lands. It is a ten-minute investment against a whole day's worth of drift.