Waiting till the last minute?
If the photocopier breaking is going to ruin the lesson, then the teacher is probably waiting until the last minute. There are situations, however, when copies do need to be made. This is a situation in which a document camera would be useful for displaying the questions in front of the whole class. Another way to deal with this situation is to break students into groups, choose one as a representative to come up and write down the question or type it out on their laptops. Then, rotate the questions around to each group. This empowers the students to collaborate on the activity, rather than just having them complete a worksheet on their own.
Low-tech solutions
If it is just a simple worksheet, the simplest solution is to read the questions off to the students and do the traditional low tech kind of assignment, with students writing their answers on notebook paper. If it is a primary source or an interesting article that was going to be the meat of the lesson, then it gets to be a bit more difficult. Some might try to do a large group reading. Putting students on the spot like this can make things difficult, especially if the reading is a pivotal part of the lesson. The students may be distracted by the fluidity of their classmates’ reading. Another route would be to split them into small groups, with one group reading together while the others work on other activities that are a part of the lesson.
The key is to be flexible. Photocopiers break. The Internet goes down. The sub doesn’t show up. But the truly great teacher is flexible and uses these mishaps as opportunities for learning.
