Bell Ringers: helpful tips for easy routines that really work

Bell ringers will get your students seated and working from the moment the late bell rings.

Seated, silent, and on-task. 

This activity does not actually include the promise of silence, but you can dream.

What are bell ringers?

I've heard them called a lot of different names, and I've even called them different names myself - bell work, bell ringers, warm-ups, do nows, drills.

Justin from SpanishPlans calls them entradas, Elisabeth from Spanish Mama calls them Para Empezar, Martina Bex from the Comprehensible Classroom calls them la campanada.

There are probably 8 other names that I haven't used or heard of.

Basically, bell ringers are a short activity that is projected to the screen or otherwise available for students to start working on as soon as they enter the class. 

They should be:

- 4 to 6 questions

- something students can (not should, but CAN) do without help - it should be suuuuuuuuuuper easy

- either a review of yesterday's lesson or a prep of some sort for today's lesson

Ideal bell work formats are:

- fill in the blank

- answer questions (in complete sentences!)

- match pictures of vocab words with their Spanish name

- match questions with their answers

- unscramble words so they are in the correct order in a sentence

Need some more bell work ideas?

Allison from Mis Clases Locas has a different activity for each day of the week for her bell work - including música miércoles and baile viernes.

Elisabeth from Spanish Mama posted another dozen ideas of great bell work activities on Secondary Spanish Space.

You can now do a different type of activity every day for like 3 weeks. 🙃

Setting Bell Work Routines

Picking up the Bell Work Sheet:

I used to have a bin at the front of the room by the door where students could pick up a sheet for a week's worth of Do Nows every Monday as they entered class.

Sometimes kids would take an entire stack and leave none for the rest of the class, like the school was gonna run out of paper and they'd be darned if they didn't have a Do Now sheet for Spanish class.

My solution was to take the entire stack and pass out Do Now sheets to kids as they entered class. 

This could be a student's job if you find that you have a Do Now hoarding problem in your classroom as well.

You can snag my blank bell work sheets here (they're free!).

Settling down:

Having students work quietly and independently on bell work, not only gets them back to remembering what in the world they did in Spanish class yesterday, but also gives you time to take attendance and do any other brief housekeeping tasks.

Set a timer for 3 or 4 minutes after the late bell rings and get your attendance done.

Stretch.

Take a sip of water.

Stroll around class and see how kids are doing.

Relax for 5 seconds because you deserve it.

When the timer goes off, review the Do Now, have everyone put it away, and start on your lesson.

Collect the whole sheet of Do Nows on Fridays. It's a pretty easy system.


via GIPHY

To Grade or Not to Grade Bell work?

It's your classroom and you're the dictator you make the rules, so you can do whatever you want. I strongly advise maintaining the appearance that bell work is graded or kids won't take it seriously and won't do it.

Your dream of kids being seated and working when the late bell rings will be destroyed. 

Students will casually stroll around the classroom like they don't have a care in the world.

In order to maintain the appearance of bell work being graded, I suggest you start out the school year by... well... grading it. 

Religiously.

Every week.

For at least 3 or 4 weeks.

Sorry.

And after that grade it once in a while for completion and feed it to the trash monster all the other weeks.

Want bell work that's already done for you?

I can't promise to come to your classroom and grade them for you, but you can get pre-made bell work for Spanish 1, Spanish 2, and Spanish 3 in my TpT store.

They're designed so that the answers animate to the screen on a click. 

Just put the PowerPoint in presentation view so students won't see the answers, then click when you're ready to review.

Easy peasy.

What do you call bell work? What routines do you have in place? Please share in the comments!