The beginning of class is crucial for getting your students settled, warmed up, and ready for that day’s learning, and bell ringers can be a great way to accomplish all of those objectives. Scroll to the bottom of this post for a free download of 15 bell ringers your high school students will love!
What are bell ringers?
Bell ringers are short activities designed to get students immediately engaged in an instructional task upon entering the classroom. They can prevent loss of transition time and integrate low-stakes opportunities for pre-assessment, review, and practice.
Bell ringers require little teacher direction so students can begin independently. The activities or directions, along with a time limit, are often displayed on a physical or digital board at the beginning of the class. You may also have heard bell ringers described as a “do now”—which is just that!
In the English classroom, bell ringer activities may include:
- Free writing, journaling, or responding to writing prompts
- Independent reading or pre-reading an assigned text
- Completing mad lib-style review activities for parts of speech
- Writing imitation sentences from model sentences
- Low-stakes writing about an engaging topic
- And more!
How to use bell ringers to develop writer’s craft
Writing instruction in high school classrooms can tend to be centered around what students need to do for high-stakes testing. Many teachers would agree that intentional instruction in developing a writer’s craft – the art and style of constructing language – can fall by the wayside with all the curriculum demands in a typical English class.
That’s why using bell ringers are a great way to get in some extra bite-sized practice that can help students develop their writing voice–which may not show up on a high-stakes test, but is incredibly important as they grow as writers.
Bell ringers are the perfect way for students to develop their voice, especially when you use mentor texts, open-ended prompts, and bite-sized opportunities for skill reinforcement.
In the English Teacher Vault, discover bell ringers for high school students structured around the use of mentor sentences, sentence frames, and sentence starters. Teachers can implement these throughout the year as they review foundational parts of speech and spiral in grammar concepts for continuous review and practice.
In the free resource (scroll to the end of this post to sign up for a free download!), you’ll find 50 amazing bell ringers showcasing powerful snippets from high-interest, classic literature.
Mentor Sentences
Mentor sentences are authentic segments of text chosen from published writing – or any great example sentence!
Students will observe a unique mentor sentence for the author’s choice of vocabulary, syntax, punctuation, repetition, length, or other elements. Renowned expert and writing educator Jeff Anderson coins this as an invitation to notice.
Teachers can also direct students to observe particular items, such as “observe the author’s use of repeated verbs.” Instead of correcting sentences for errors (like many popular grammar methods do), students focus on analyzing good writing and learn to recreate their own!
After observation, students will use guided prompts designed to get them thinking about the writer’s stylistic choices. Use these questions to generate discussion and then follow with an opportunity to practice with the pattern or word choice.
Sentence Frames
Using sentence frames is a great strategy to follow mentor sentences. With a sentence frame, students can focus specifically on word choice or a particular part of speech.
Teachers can display a mentor sentence and then show a frame with a particular word or phrase removed. Students then replicate the sentences with synonyms or play with word choices that alter or replicate the author’s intended meaning. This is a fantastic way to illustrate the power of word choice!
Sentence Starters
Finally, sentence starters are effective tools for encouraging students to test out phrases or word choices that they may not typically use in their everyday writing. Here is one example from the set of bell ringers we have in The English Teacher Vault:
After displaying this clause, teachers will ask students to complete the sentence with a continuation of this thought and further freewrite on the subject of the sentence.
Not only do students get to review an important concept of syntax, but they also incorporate imaginative writing.
Integrating these bell ringers into grammar instruction helps cement the application of new concepts into student writing. They’ll start noticing new language patterns and feel the freedom to play with style!
Tips for using bell ringers with high school students
Bell ringers are usually a familiar practice for high school students, but consider these helpful tips to make these activities even better in the secondary classroom.
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- Set expectations and create a routine. Students need to know exactly what to do in a bell ringer routine to keep it brief and effective. For example, provide directions in advance about where to write responses, where to submit or turn in, and if there will be a time limit.
- Take a grade… or not. Bell ringers do not always have to be an assessment piece – maybe you just want to offer the opportunity to practice! They can also be great formative data points to grade if reviewing a previously taught concept.
- Keep it brief. Remember that bell ringers are not intended to replace a full lesson. They can provide great data for future lessons, but the activity itself should take 5-10 minutes total.
- Less is more. Adding more materials will only make the activity more complex and defeat the purpose of bite-sized practice. Try posting your grammar bell ringers digitally to capture a daily timestamp, or use blank notecards or sticky notes.
- Repetition works! Students should be able to get right to work without teacher assistance, so don’t introduce new bell ringer activities each class period. Use what works and repeat often to develop a routine.
With any classroom routine, practice makes perfect. Once your students have the hang of these simple grammar bell ringer routines, they’ll be styling sentences in no time!
Free Download: 15 Bell Ringers!
Grab a few of our most popular bell ringers here: 15 Fantastic Bell Ringers (Google Forced Copy).
These bell ringers have been used in hundreds of classrooms, and students enjoy using them to up-level their writing style and getting creative with them.
Related Posts:
How To Teach Well-Placed Adjectives
3 Outstanding Follow-Up Activities After You Teach A Grammar Lesson
Get More ELA Resources in the English Teacher Vault:
Find more resources for those tricky-to-teach grammar concepts in the English Teacher Vault! Members will find complete grammar curricula with engaging, interactive activities to cement parts of speech, sentence structure, agreement, parallel structure, and more.
Access all this and more with a $1 trial membership to the English Teacher Vault today!
