10 Quick Activities for Shakespeare: Bell Ringers that Deepen Understanding

Teaching Shakespeare is hard. There are so many barriers created by teaching something that is over 400 years old. The language is archaic; the plots are intricate and the settings unfamiliar. The key is using the first few minutes of class to create the bridge by using bell ringer activities for Shakesepare, you can help students navigate the difficult language and more.

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10 quick activities for Shakespeare: bell ringer ideas for any text by Shakespeare.

What is a bell ringer?

It is a quick activity that students do at the start of class, generally independently. In some schools, these are called warm ups or “do nows.” But no matter what you call them, they should be activities geared toward a skill, task or theme that you want students to know and be able to do.

10 Warm Up Activities for Shakespeare

These warm up activities for Shakespeare can be modified for any of Shakespeare’s plays, or even his sonnets. With just a little preparation, you can use these throughout your unit.

Want to know more? Grab this free sampler of 10 Bell Ringers for Shakespeare.

Warm Up Activity One: Focus on Vocabulary through Roots in Context

Teaching roots or morphemes in the context of the play can be a great way to help students learn additional vocabulary while helping them learn that they can be “word detectives” using the word parts to identify meaning.

You can read more about teaching roots in context in this post. Or you can grab ready to use roots in context for Macbeth and roots in context for Hamlet.

Warm Up Activity Two: Three of These Things

The idea of a Three of These Things bell ringer activity for Shakespeare is based on what Amanda Cardenas of Mud and Ink Teaching calls a “Sesame Street Quiz.” You give students a list of 4 items from a text and then they choose the three that go together and the one that is an outlier. And then of course, they need to explain why the three go together and the 4 doesn’t.

So for example, in Twelfth Night you might give them

Viola
Olivia
Orsino
Malvolio

And a response to this might be:

In Twelfth Night, we follow Viola, disguised as Cesario in Orsino’s court. I believe out of the four, the three names that connect would be Olivia, Viola, and Orsino. They are all in a sort of love triangle, and while Malvolio is one of the many people who is in love with Olivia, that’s all he is in the story, a servant who loves Olivia.

With the three I’ve chosen, their stories are more complex, and connected. Olivia is being courted by Orsino, but wants nothing to do with him. When he sends his servant Cesario (Viola) to “court her for him”, Olivia falls in love with Viola. Viola is a bit stuck, because she knows Olivia is in love with her, but she is secretly in love with Orsino, which he is completely unaware of. Malvolio is the only one without a complex love life, no one is secretly in love with him, or courting him, he just loves Oliva from afar.

10 bell ringer activities for Shakespeare--use with any play

Activity Three: One Word Response

These work really well as both bell ringers and as exit tickets. Students choose one word to describe something in the play and then explain their choice. When I teach Macbeth, I will often ask students for one word to describe either Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. I will use this one a couple times throughout the play so that we can then note the progression in the character.

Activity Four: Paraphrasing

Give students 1-3 lines to put in their own words. It is important that you stick to a very short passage for this paraphrasing. Once they have put the language into their own words they could write a sentence or two about why it is important to the play.

Want to see this in action? Grab the Free Shakespeare Bell Ringer Sampler.

Activity Five: Lessons in Close Reading

Give students a passage with 2-3 questions that focus their attention on an aspect of the author’s craft. This is a great way to have students focus on diction, figurative language or imagery. Begin by having students identify the craft. Then have them note the meaning in the passage. Finally, have them consider how the passage would be different if the craft was different.

Activity Six: Spill the TEA

This is a three-four sentence response. TEA is a mnemonic for Topic sentence, evidence and analysis. This is a great way to have students focus on the essential question for your unit. Or you could give them a prompt focused on a specific character, setting, theme or symbolism.

10 bell ringer activities for Shakespeare's plays

Activity Seven: 3 2 1

This is a classic that you can use with any text but it work particularly well for Shakespeare. Ask students to share three things about x, two things about y and one thing about z.

Here is a favorite:

3 Things that happened in Act 1
2 conflicts
1 question you have

Asking students to ask a question allows you to start the period by clarifying issues that the students are having.

Grab a free 3 2 1 to use with any Shakespeare Text.

Activity Eight: Allusion of the Week

Give students the back story for allusions that appear in the text. Begin with the origin story. Follow that with the excerpt from the text. Once students understand the connection to the Shakespeare text, you can expose students to additional places they might find the allusion.

Activity Nine: Response Tickets

These response tickets ask students to think back to the previous lesson with a prompt like “Last class, I noticed” or “Last class, I wondered”. This is a great place to start because it is forcing students to think back to their previous learning.

These also work great as exit tickets. Instead of “last class,” they would just respond to prompts like “I noticed” or “I wondered.”

Activity Ten: Fine Art Responses

This is an idea modified from Jim Burke’s great teacher PD book: 50 Essential Lessons (← affiliate link). In it he describes a lesson where students respond to three different paintings of Ophelia. However, you can shorten this for a bell ringer by giving one painting or image of actors to which students can respond.

This is a great activity for students who may encounter graphics on standardized tests. It trains them to look beyond the surface level.

Want a free example of the Fine Art Response for Shakespeare?

10 bell ringer activities to use with any play by Shakespeare

Adding to Your Bell Ringer Activities for Shakespeare

If you are looking for activities for Shakespeare, these bell ringers can add to your routine. Most of them can also be used as exit tickets or formative assessments.

And if you are looking for ready to use bell ringers for Macbeth, Hamlet, Twelfth Night and more, you can find them in the Pencils and Prologues Membership. Want to see what you can expect? Grab a free sampler of Shakespeare Bell Ringers.