After pandemic teaching, I have realized how important it is to give students a minute or so to decompress in between classes. I used to be a “when the bell rings, you’re in your seat working on the bell work (or else)!” but I realize now that even the real world doesn’t operate like that. Meetings often start a minute or two after the start time, movies have trailers, etc. And I myself often need a minute or two to reset from the previous class. These 10 easy bell ringers will do both!
10 Easy Bell Ringers:
1. Vibe Check
I have printed quarter sheets of paper with a range of emotions on them and sentence starters. Students let me know how they’re feeling and why and if they would like a check in with me. These are important for me to do on Mondays when kids have been home for a few days. If a student does want a check in, I can make time to do so later in class. It also helps me decide how my lesson is going to go that day, and if I need to adjust things based on the mood of the room, or if there’s a students who might need a little more grace that day.
2. Vocabulary Doodle
If there’s a new content word kids need to know, I might just start with that! I call it a “doodle” because kids lobe that they can be creative with it. I have them “doodle” the word in their vocabulary journals, and then work with their seat partner to look up the word and create an example sentence or a picture that represents the word.
3. Mentor Sentence
Mentor sentences are amazing for teaching different pieces of grammar or sentence structure, or just to admire a beautifully written sentence. The sentence can be used for a day or a whole week, exploring and using the sentence in different ways. MY favorite is when students write their own sentence using the structure of the mentor sentence.
4. Quote/ First Impressions
A thought provoking quote related to a theme or concept can get student brains working in the right direction! They write down what the quote means to them and connections they can make to what we’re doing in class. The same activity can be done with images!
5. Silent Reading
Sustained Silent Reading used to be my favorite part of the school day! I had this routine when I taught intervention reading. Every day we began with about 10 minutes of reading ( or quiet time, if the student was pretending, haha). I brought in my book too, and it was a really special time for us as a class. Sometimes I would let students know it was time to start class and they would ask if they could read the entire period ( be still, my lil’ heart).
6. Good News
Kids love to share good news, so let them! If students are too shy to speak, I let them write it on a piece of paper for me or another student to read anonymously.
7. Poll/ Word Cloud
Word clouds are so fun to do – I love to ask students to choose their favorite word from a reading, or a word to describe a character, etc. and show the results on the board in real time! Polls can work in the same way.
8. Shout Outs
Students can write something positive about another student to be read aloud. Give them a sticky note that they can write on, and post them around your room or better yet
9. Journaling
Giving students time to write down their prompted or unprompted thoughts is an excellent practice for emotional health and for creative writing.
10. Homework/ Problem Check
If I assigned a task that students can grade on their own – I let them! If it was a piece of writing, I’ll have them trade with a partner to check for something like accurately cited quotes or a clear topic sentence – whatever the need is at the time – and give them time to re- write.
What do you think about these easy bell ringers?
I love these ideas because, with a little teaching of expectations, these are regular or semi-regular strategies to start class that will require very little prep from you. Need more strategies? Check out this post I wrote on hexagonal thinking!
Have you tried any of these soft starts? What “soft starts” or start of class routines work well in your classroom?
