You’re doing all the right things - your students are engaged and exploring meaningful phenomena on the regular, you provide frequent opportunities for students to use science and engineering practices, and your classroom is set up to facilitate group collaboration and communication. These are all wonderful for student learning - but when a student is absent, it’s truly a challenge as they’ve missed meaningful experiences in class and it’s a burden for the teacher to provide a quality substitute lesson.
Take a look at a LABsent
Activities for every middle school and high school Biology lesson have been modified for a student away from the classroom. Students access the student sheets and, when appropriate, videos so that they can collect and analyze the data and return to their group caught up and ready to move on.
See an example from middle school
See an example from high school Biology
LABsent packages may not need to be completed in their entirety as most SEPUP activities take more than one class period to complete. If a student is only absent one day, the teacher may need to assign only certain portions of the LABsent packet. Long-Term absences may require completion of several packets.