[this post may contain affiliate links]
Let's talk about Bell Ringers, folks!
I have to admit that I haven't always been great with consistency when it comes to doing Bell Ringers in my classroom. There was a really big push at my school a few years back for all classrooms to have bell ringers, or start-ups, at the beginning of each class. During this time, I made several attempts and hated all of them.
But I did learn some things from these epic failures!
First of all, the entire concept of bell ringers is based on the idea of creating routines and expectations in your classroom. If students are expected to complete something as soon as they walk in the door, they are less likely to run around, making it more difficult to reign in the class to start for the day. In theory, I really liked this... but in practice, I found it to be more difficult. Bell Ringers are often random tasks that students are asked to do based on whatever you're covering in class or whatever powerpoint lessons someone created to cover grammar or mechanics. In this way, the only real routine is that they were required to do something at the beginning of class. I felt that this created more chaos than it resolved, with students often unclear on what they were supposed to do.
What if the process didn't have to be like that? What if it were consistent? What if it were interesting? Would students be more inclined to do the bell ringer if they were actually engaged in it? What if it were valuable outside of your daily lessons?
So, I experimented over the last few school years, and I have created two different Bell Ringer methodologies that are routine and interesting. I will outline them both below, and you will have the opportunity to purchase the materials for whichever methodology you jive with! Both of these have been successful in my classroom, and I definitely recommend them. I personally have a favorite of the two, but we will get to that later :)
1. Weekly Bell Ringer PowerPoint and Response Sheet
This one is exactly as it sounds. You use a PowerPoint template each week that includes the activity for the day on each slide. There are 5 activities, and they never change. You would have to edit this document each week to change the content, but the task would never change.
The tasks are:
Mondays - analyze a famous quote
Tuesdays - edit a paragraph for errors. I use Every Day Edits from Education World's website for these, just copy and paste into the page.
Wednesdays - Photo Analysis - any photo will do. Have students describe the photo using sensory information and then make inferences about what is happening in the photo based on that information.
Thursdays - Weekly Skill Check. This is where you would ask them to recall something from the lessons that week or simply explain what something is or means or what they have learned.
Friday - Weekly Reflection (this one was my students' favorite) - they will write 1 thing they learned in class that week, 2 kind things they did for others, and 3 things they can do next week to have an even better week. Reflective writing is good practice!
Students use a Response sheet to keep track of their responses, and because the tasks don't change, each week, students just need a new copy of the response sheet. They are responsible for keeping it in their notebooks all week, which are to be turned in on Fridays.
I score their response sheet 10 points per day for a total of 50 points. If a student is absent, I have them write ABSENT in the space for that day, and I do not take credit from them for that day. Bell ringers should be positive experiences based on solid routines, not lessons in responsibility.
I give students 10 minutes from the time the bell rings to complete this activity. When the 10-minute timer is up, we go over the activity together for about 5 minutes. This gives students the opportunity to share their thoughts and responses, and it gives that extra few minutes for slower kids to catch up
Overall, using this Bell Ringer was a positive experience for my students, and after a few weeks, the routine was set, and they always knew what to do. I tried to find interesting quotes and photos to incite discussion and thought, and I often found photos of historical significance so that students would learn something new and interesting as well. A favorite photo was of the Hindenburg explosion - I had to forcefully end the discussion about that one!
If this Bell Ringer routine jives with your teaching sensibilities, then you can purchase the whole pack with the PowerPoint already ready to go and the Bell Ringer Response sheet PDF ready to be printed.
This is $9.99 and is available in the resource store!
Comments