Tools for Relief & Casual Teachers
Ready-to-go classroom tools
This page lists tools for relief, casual, and supply teachers in Australian schools — tools that work in a classroom you've never seen before, with a class list you received at 8:47am, on a school network where you can't install anything. Every tool is free or free-tier, runs in a browser, and works without an account or with a one-click sign-in.
The jobs covered: walking in cold with a week of relief notes and needing a timer, a random-name picker, a noise monitor, a lesson-starter game, a fast-finisher word search, a read-aloud picture book link, a maths warm-up, or a quick brain break. Also covered: the "no day plan" reality — emergency lesson plans by year level, five-minute fillers, and structured activities you can run straight from a phone or tablet at the front of the room.
Year-level fit matters for relief teaching. For Foundation to Year 2 we favour visual, voice-led tools with short attention demands — simple timers with sounds, matching games, and read-aloud storybook resources. For Years 3–6 we include quick-fire maths tools, word search and spelling activity generators (print from the staff printer), and quiz-style review tools that work whole-class or in groups. For secondary relief, we add discussion prompts, silent-reading timers, and exam-style practice.
Everything on this page works with zero prep. Most tools have a "classroom display" or "presentation" mode so you can project straight onto the whiteboard. If the school has blocked YouTube, tools that rely on video are flagged. And if you need a printable activity, every print-ready tool on this page outputs a PDF you can send straight to the office printer.
Phonics Hero
A systematic synthetic phonics app free for teachers, with over 850 games covering all 44 phonemes — designed for Australian and UK classrooms.
Reading Doctor
An Australian-designed phonics app built by a speech-language pathologist, teaching children to read and spell using evidence-based synthetic phonics.
MagicSchool AI
A suite of 60+ AI tools built specifically for teachers — lesson planners, rubric generators, IEP writers, and communication drafters that save hours every week.
Smiling Mind
A free, Australian-developed mindfulness app with curriculum-aligned programmes for schools, created by psychologists and educators.
Too Noisy
A fun classroom noise level monitor that uses dynamic visuals and a built-in rewards system to help teachers manage volume levels.
Diffit
AI-powered differentiation tool that creates levelled readings, vocabulary lists, comprehension questions, and summaries adapted to each student's reading level.
Classroomscreen
A free customisable digital dashboard for teachers with timer, random name picker, noise monitor, traffic lights, and dozens more widgets.
Bouncy Balls
A free, browser-based classroom noise monitor where colourful balls bounce higher as the room gets louder — no sign-up required.
Notebook LM
AI notebooks grounded in your own sources that auto-generate study guides, podcasts, video overviews, and mind maps from uploaded PDFs, notes, or links.
Mathspace
An Australian-developed adaptive maths platform with step-by-step support that helps students understand the "why" behind each problem.
Curipod
Interactive, AI-generated slides with polls, word clouds, drawings, and SEL check-ins that give teachers real-time student engagement data.
My Curriculum Mate
An AI-powered planning platform for Australian K-12 teachers that generates curriculum-aligned lesson plans, unit plans, worksheets, slideshows, and NAPLAN prep resources — all mapped to ACARA v9.0, NSW NESA 2024, and Victorian Curriculum 2.0.
DoodleMaths
An adaptive daily maths practice app that adjusts difficulty to each child's level, aligned with the Australian curriculum from Kindergarten to Year 6.
Tynker
A gamified coding platform used in 150,000+ schools with 200+ tutorials, where kids build games, control drones, and create Minecraft mods.
Almanack AI
AI-powered curriculum design tool for unit planning, assessment generation, and standards alignment that saves teachers hours of planning time.
Otsimo
A gamified special education and speech therapy app for children with autism and developmental disabilities, with personalised learning paths.
QuestionWell
Generate question banks, learning objectives, and assessments from any text, video, or topic — then export to Google Forms, Kahoot, Blooket, and more.
Twee
All-in-one AI platform to create, share, and grade language lessons with vocabulary exercises, dialogues, and reading texts aligned to CEFR levels.
Your Staff Room
A trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming AI platform for Australian educators — featuring lesson builders, report writers, behaviour support planners, social story creators, and learner profile generators with OT and Speech Pathology lenses.
Inkhorn
An AI-powered report card comment writer built by a former NSW maths teacher. Create reusable sentence banks, auto-insert student names and pronouns, and let AI help craft personalised feedback for every student.
Lesson Creator
An AI platform that generates 13 teaching resources simultaneously — lesson plans, PowerPoints, worksheets, quizzes, crosswords, word searches, and more — all from a single learning intention, aligned to Australian Curriculum v9.0.
Handwriting Repeater
A free web-based handwriting practice tool that demonstrates correct letter formation in real time. Features Loop and Trace modes, dotted thirds, tram lines, and adjustable pen styles — perfect for Foundation to Year 4 handwriting lessons.