Guide
How to run wet day plans in a primary school.
A wet day plan is a standing conversion of the yard duty roster: every outdoor zone maps to a named indoor post, decided once, so one call switches the whole roster when it rains.
Written by James Hooke, owner of Bell Path and a Victorian primary school teacher.
Updated 20 August 20267 min read
Key takeaways
- A wet day plan is a standing conversion of the duty roster: every outdoor zone maps to a defined indoor post, decided once, not negotiated every time it rains.
- One named role calls "wet day timetable on", by a set time, on stated triggers.
- Indoor supervision has a different geography (corridors, sight-lines, rooms at capacity), so the mapping needs walking as well as writing.
- Wet-day duty is still duty. The fairness count keeps running, or the same reliable people absorb every rainy lunch all winter.
Why wet days go wrong
When it rains, the outdoor roster no longer applies. The school has students indoors, a supervision plan written for a playground, and about twenty minutes to replace it.
Improvised wet days follow the same script everywhere. Someone grabs whoever is visible, the same agreeable staff say yes, two corridors end up unsupervised because everyone assumed someone else had them, and the classroom teachers who kept their own classes lose the lunch break they were owed. The cause is a missing plan.
The standing conversion
The core of a wet day plan is a fixed mapping. Each outdoor duty post converts to a defined indoor post: this zone's teacher takes that corridor, that building's classrooms, the library overflow. The person rostered to the oval at lunch is automatically the person at the Year 3/4 corridor when the wet day timetable is on. One decision switches the whole roster, and nobody is recruited on the spot.
Design the mapping against the building, not the org chart: the corridors and wet areas where students gather, rooms with capacity limits, stairwells and blind corners, and the walking distance between a teacher's outdoor zone and their indoor post. Walk it once with the map in hand.
Name the caller, the deadline and the trigger
Every wet day plan needs three named things: who calls it (one role, with a deputy), by when (a decision time before each break; a morning call for the day beats a scramble at the bell), and on what triggers. Rain, obviously, but also heat, wind, smoke and waterlogged grounds. The plan is an indoor supervision plan, not only a rain plan, and schools that name it that way use it more consistently.
The call then needs one broadcast that reaches everyone the same way every time (staffroom screen, group message, PA), using the same words: "wet day timetable is on for lunch." Staff who hear a consistent signal stop asking the office one by one.
Keep the fairness count running
Indoor duty is duty. If the wet-day conversion adds posts (more corridors than zones, or split shifts so teachers get part of their break), those additions must land in the same fairness count as everything else, or winter terms slowly overload the staff whose rooms happen to sit near the busy corridors.
The same applies to classroom teachers who supervise their own class through a wet lunch. That is supervision time too. Whether your school credits it, rotates it, or rosters relief for it is a policy choice, but count it.
The students' half of the plan
Supervision is half the wet day. The other half is what 400 students do indoors for forty minutes. Rooms with named quiet activities, a film room, board games that only come out on wet days, and clear rules for moving between spaces do more for behaviour than any amount of extra supervision. Build this half once too, and refresh it each term, because wet-day novelty wears off.
How Bell Path handles it
Bell Path stores your outdoor-to-indoor mapping as a standing wet day plan. Declaring a wet day converts the current duty roster to indoor posts, staff see their changed post in the staff portal and on the staffroom display, and the fairness count keeps running through the conversion.
Common questions
- Who should decide when a wet day timetable applies?
- One named role should call it, commonly the daily organiser or an assistant principal, with a deputy for their absences, deciding by a set time before each break against stated triggers.
- How do we map outdoor duty zones to indoor posts?
- Start from where students gather indoors (corridors, wet areas, library, halls), set posts against sight-lines and room capacity, then give each outdoor post an indoor equivalent so the existing roster converts automatically. Walk the mapping once before you publish it.
- Does yard duty fairness still count on wet days?
- Yes, it should. Indoor supervision is the same work in a different place, and wet-day conversions often add posts. If the fairness count skips rainy days, the winter term overloads whoever sits nearest the busy corridors.
- What belongs in a wet day plan document?
- A wet day plan document should hold the trigger conditions and decision time, who calls it, the zone-to-post mapping, room capacity notes, the broadcast wording, the student activity arrangements per area, and where relief teachers fit.
Bell Path moves the duty roster indoors in one step
See wet day planningKeep reading
The yard duty roster: covered every break, fair all term.
A yard duty roster puts a named staff member on every supervised zone for every break, every day, and spreads that load fairly across the term. This guide covers coverage, fairness counting, part-timer loading, and the wet day plan, the four things that decide whether your roster lasts the term.
Covering teacher absences without wearing out the same five people.
Covering a teacher absence means deciding, before the first bell, who takes each class, duty and meeting the absent teacher leaves behind, and recording whose planning time paid for it. Every morning, someone turns a list of absent staff into that plan. This guide makes the decision sequence explicit, and shows where fairness and planning time leak.
Wet day plan software
When it rains, each wet-day room gets one of its listed teachers who was already on yard duty at that break, and any room nobody can take is flagged. The plan prints from the same page as the normal roster.
Yard duty roster software
Bell Path builds the yard duty roster and shows you every unfilled duty before the week is printed, stops one teacher being booked on two zones at once, and keeps a record of who was rostered. The fairness record sits right beside it, in hours and in counts, for the whole year.