With that, bell ringers and the added sense of structure they create bring all sorts of benefits to the ELA classroom. Bell ringers encourage student autonomy by giving them an independent task to focus on at the start of class. That’s why implementing bell ringers is the perfect solution. Of course, that structure needs to be combined with student autonomy. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over my years of teaching is that students thrive on structure. 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.Īnd that would be as close to magic as we get without stepping on platform 9 ¾.What are the Benefits of Implementing Bell Ringers? (To learn more about how I implement routines and procedures like this one, check out this video.) And again.Īnd again until each student follows the steps. And then, we go into the hallway and practice the whole routine again. I walk around and praise, praise, praise those who are doing all the steps and immediately start working on their bell ringer. 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. And since we are mere muggles, we have to explicitly teach and walk through exactly what we expect.ĭuring 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. Unfortunately, it’s not something that happens automatically. On Fridays we even throw in some collaboration! Students switch and answer each other’s questions and provide feedback about the quality of questions.īefore 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. With this type of activity, students determine character motivations, make inferences, analyze the author’s purpose, etc. Gone are the, “What color of shirt was Ben wearing?” questions. Because the stems are standards-based, students are required to think deeper about the text. With this bellringer, students read a short story and write multiple choice questions using the stems provided. Question Writing - This is definitely more of a higher order activity, but it’s one students enjoy because they are creating. 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. The activities are scaffolded so it gets more challenging as the week progresses. Standards-Based Bellringers - These are good for focused practice to go along with the skills we are covering in class. They typically like the music because it’s a good mix of genres and time periods. Typically the song and the journal question correlate. Students are given journal questions and they answer them while a song is playing. Question of the Day - This is a crowd favorite, for sure. Each set takes a week to complete, so we do two of each type in one quarter. I have four core bell ringer activities that I rotate through throughout the year. 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. It would be like eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich everyday for lunch. I have found that if I do the same type of bell ringer every single day, students get bored. Over the years, my bell ringers have developed and grown to include meaningful and engaging tasks. 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. My number one priority was to create a bell ringer routine. As a newbie teacher, I knew this was the way to go.įast forward 7 years to the first time I had a classroom all to myself. I loved how the students knew exactly what to do and were engaged from bell to bell. It was consistent and required minimal direction from the teacher. In the other classroom, the students came in and immediately started on a bell ringer assignment. The teacher knew her stuff and was great at breaking down the concepts, but everyday 10-15 minutes were wasted. If I had to describe this class in one word, it would be chaos. 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. I am so thankful for these early years because those experiences shaped who I am and how I teach today.ĭuring this time, I learned a valuable lesson about structure. When I was a special ed teacher, I had the privilege of working with amazing co-teachers.
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