When I was a special ed teacher, I had the privilege of working with amazing co-teachers. I am so thankful for these early years because those experiences shaped who I am and how I teach today. 

During this time, I learned a valuable lesson about structure. 

In one classroom, the students would come in, roam around, talk to each other, and just hang out until the teacher decided to start her lesson. If I had to describe this class in one word, it would be chaos. The teacher knew her stuff and was great at breaking down the concepts, but everyday 10-15 minutes were wasted.

In the other classroom, the students came in and immediately started on a bell ringer assignment. It was consistent and required minimal direction from the teacher. I loved how the students knew exactly what to do and were engaged from bell to bell. As a newbie teacher, I knew this was the way to go.

Fast forward 7 years to the first time I had a classroom all to myself. My number one priority was to create a bell ringer routine. From experience, I knew how this could set the tone for the day, and I wanted engaged students who knew what to do from the minute they walked into my room. 

Over the years, my bell ringers have developed and grown to include meaningful and engaging tasks. I have found that if I do the same type of bell ringer every single day, students get bored. I don’t blame them. It would be like eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich everyday for lunch. I’m the type of person who likes to throw in a square retro pizza and some tater tots into the lunch rotation, so my bell ringers need some variety too. 

What I Do

I have four core bell ringer activities that I rotate through throughout the year. Each set takes a week to complete, so we do two of each type in one quarter. 

Question of the Day - This is a crowd favorite, for sure. Students are given journal questions and they answer them while a song is playing. Typically the song and the journal question correlate. They typically like the music because it’s a good mix of genres and time periods.

Standards-Based Bellringers - These are good for focused practice to go along with the skills we are covering in class. The activities are scaffolded so it gets more challenging as the week progresses. For example, on Monday students might be identifying figurative language and then on Friday they are writing a short story that uses figurative language to describe the characters and setting.

Question Writing - This is definitely more of a higher order activity, but it’s one students enjoy because they are creating. With this bellringer, students read a short story and write multiple choice questions using the stems provided. Because the stems are standards-based, students are required to think deeper about the text. Gone are the, “What color of shirt was Ben wearing?” questions. With this type of activity, students determine character motivations, make inferences, analyze the author’s purpose, etc.  On Fridays we even throw in some collaboration! Students switch and answer each other’s questions and provide feedback about the quality of questions.  

Spiral Review - This is a new resource I’m trying out this year! It is a set of five activities that focuses on skills and concepts we have already covered in class. We all know that in the field of learning, repetition is what creates mastery of any skill, so this set of activities is designed to provide students with continued practice throughout the year. Each day is different and can be completed in about 5-10 minutes. Because I’m excited about this new resource, I have set one FREE for you today! Just fill out the form to get your own copy!

*All bell ringers are available on ELA Unlimited*

The Routine

Before I sign off, I think it’s important to mention that in order for bell ringers to be successful and meaningful, they need to be part of your daily routine. Unfortunately, it’s not something that happens automatically. And since we are mere muggles, we have to explicitly teach and walk through exactly what we expect.

During the first week of school, Starting on Bell Ringers is a routine I practice with the Coming in the Classroom and the Getting Organized routines. 

I have my students go into the hall with all of their stuff, practice coming in correctly, getting organized in 3 minutes, and immediately starting on their bell ringer. I walk around and praise, praise, praise those who are doing all the steps and immediately start working on their bell ringer. And then, we go into the hallway and practice the whole routine again. And again. 

And again until each student follows the steps. (To learn more about how I implement routines and procedures like this one, check out this video.)

It takes a lot of time, attention, redirection, and praise in the beginning, but 2-3 weeks in, you will have a class that enters camly, knows what to do, and is engaged from the moment they step foot into your classroom. 

And that would be as close to magic as we get without stepping on platform 9 ¾. 

Happy Teaching,

Savannah