I don’t exactly know when I started using them, but warm up activities for high school English are key in my book. Over the years, I have called them a number of things: warm ups, bell ringer activity, bell work, and class starters. They all do the same thing. They give students a regular way to get themselves focused and in the right frame of mind for class.
What is a Bell Ringer Activity?
Perhaps I should start with what a bell ringer activity is. A bell ringer activity, warm up, bell work, whatever your choose to call it is an activity that takes 5-10 minutes at the beginning of class to get things started. It should not require any verbal or direct teacher instruction. Students should be able to get started immediately and without adult intervention. Depending on how you set up your bell ringer routine, it could be directly related to the lesson or it could be skills practice.
Since a bell ringer activity should require little to no verbal instruction, it gives you time to do behind the scenes things like take attendance or quickly glance at your email for anything that might be pressing or last minute prep on the lesson for the day.
How to Use Bell Ringers in the Classroom
The important thing about using bell ringers in the classroom is routine. You need to be consistent about having the work ready for pick up and or posted before the next set of students enter the room. I have a shelf where kids pick up the assignments for the day and have slides that I post with additional directions.
Establishing a Bell Ringer Activity Routine
The first day of school, I greet my students at the door with the bell ringer activity. I give each student the directions as they enter the room. “Good morning (or afternoon). Have a seat wherever and go ahead and get started on this.”
The second day of school, I greet the students at the door with the direction to pick up the handouts on the shelf. I repeat that greeting for a few days and by the end of the first week, they are into the routine of completing their bell ringer activity.
Even if it is later in the year when you decide you want to start using bell ringers, you could use the same process to get your students into the routines. It just might take longer.
Which Type is Best?
The types of bell ringer activities that work best will depend on your students and there are a couple of ways that I have set them up over the years, but there is essentially four bell ringer activity methods.
1. The same thing every day
2. The same thing over the course of the week
3. A pattern of activities (Monday Mentor Sentences, Tuesday Terms, etc.)
4. An activity tied to your unit
My school has rarely had a schedule that allowed us to use the third method easily, but I have used the other three with great success over the years. And I have lots of ideas about how you can incorporate a bell ringer activity into you high school English classroom.
Choosing the right bell ringer activities for high school English will depend a lot of which ones work best with your current schedule as well as choosing what works for your current unit. So read on to find of list of bell ringers that I have used over the years with great success.
Ideas for the Same Bell Ringer Activity Everyday
Quote of the Day
We used this one for many years because the New York State Regents exam used to require the students to write an essay based on literature they had read during the year and a quote that they had to use as the foundation of the essay. In some ways it was similar to the AP Lit Open Question. It was a good essay. I kind of miss it.
Post a quotation that is thematically linked to the literature you are reading. The directions are always the same:
- Copy the quote into your notebook. (We had a designated area in our notebooks.)
- Put the quotation into your own words. (In other words, practice paraphrasing.)
- Find a character or situation from literature, TV or movies that connects to the quotation in some way. (Practice of analysis and application.)
Word of the Day
Build vocabulary by having students copy a word of the day. Give them the definition, part of speech, and an example sentence. You can then have them do something additional with the words like draw a picture or write another sentence.
Poem of the Day
This is similar to my Poem of the Week, but scaled back. We used this one when we were on a block schedule so we had a little more time to spend on the poem. They would read and annotate and then we would discuss. I would give them terms along the way. We would have Student Lead Poem of the Day during one quarter, too.
Grammar of the Day
Check out this idea for hands-on grammar bell ringers for my friend Missy over at A Better Way to Learn.
Ideas for The Same Bell Ringer Activity Over the Course of a Week
Poem of the Week
Poem of the Week has been my go to for AP Literature Bell Ringer Activity for years. The great thing about Poem of the Week is that it really doesn’t matter how many days a week you see students, you can still spend a couple days on the same poem. I even did it during our foray into hybrid instruction when we only met two days a week.
How Poem of the Week Works
On the first day of your learning cycle, distribute the poem. Have students read and annotate. Each subsequent day, present them with focused rereading questions. On the last day of the cycle, give them a writing prompt to have them write just a thesis or a paragraph about the poem.
Grab Poem of the Week for Eve Merriam’s “Metaphor” here. For 20+ no prep Poem of the Week, check this out. And read more about Poem of the Week in this post.
Passage of the Week
Passage of the week is similar to Poem of the Week except it is with prose passages. I have just started alternating between Poem of the Week and Passage of the Week. I try to keep the passages under 250 words so that it will only take a minute or two to read and annotate.
Vocabulary of the Week/ Roots of the Week
This is another one of those bell ringer activities that I have done a variety of ways over the years, but I love to teach students about Greek and Latin roots because they are a tool for vocabulary rather than just memorizing a list of random words.
On Monday, give students a list of 5 roots, prefixes or suffixes. They copy these into their notebook. Then have students do quick activities with the roots during the week. Write sentences, draw pictures, list additional words, etc. Every other Friday, you can quiz them.
Or, give students 1-2 roots each day. Use a vocabulary square or a chart to have them build their lists.
Now, I use Roots in Context of the literary work we are reading as a class. I find a passage in the text that has a few words that contain roots, prefixes or suffixes. Then I give students the list of the roots, on Monday, they find the words in the passage and brainstorm additional words that have the roots, prefixes or suffixes.
On the following day, students add to their list of brainstormed words and try to determine the meaning of the roots, etc. You could have them look them up. On the other days, you can give them additional activities.
No prep Roots in Context for Macbeth and (free) Roots in Context for Story of an Hour are in my TPT shop.
Ideas for A Pattern of Practice
Some people like to do the same type of bell ringers each week day. Often they use alliterations to title the activities. Here is one example:
Monday Mentors Sentences: for more ideas about mentor sentences as warm ups, see this post from my friend Missy at A Better Way to Teach.
Tuesday Terms or Tuesday Task Cards: each Tuesday you can review and/or practice literary terms or give your students a task card assignment.
Wednesday Words or Wednesday Well Being: You can do vocabulary work or SEL checks. During hybrid teaching, we used the first day of the cycle to check in with our kids. We asked them questions like what is going well right now? What is not going well? Tell us one good thing about your life right now. Etc.
Thursday Themes or Thursday Three-Two-One: Central Idea is one of the most important skills required by the NYS English Regents exams, so we like to dedicate some of our warm up time to practicing these skills. We use iStories from Narrative Magazine to have students practice identifying the topics and writing central idea statements.
Three-Two-Ones are one of my favorite checks for understanding. I use them more frequently as exit tickets, but they work great for warm ups too. For 15 + 1 No prep Three-Two-One Templates, check this out.
Friday Figurative Language or Friday Five: You can do Figurative Language Work like having students write metaphors for X or you can have students like 5 X.
Bell Ringer Activities that Tie to Your Unit
You may choose to be more random in your Warm Up Activities. And that is totally okay. In my English 11 class, I like to vary my pattern of bell ringers by unit. Some units it makes sense to do a pattern while during other units, I want the bell ringer to tie directly to the text we are studying. So here are some great ways to make your bell ringer tie directly to your unit.
Of course a number of the ideas mentioned above are perfect for bell ringer activities to tie directly to your unit. I love to use a variety of Roots in Context, Three-Two-Ones and Lessons in Close Reading when our class is working on a full class read.
Three-Two-Ones
For more on Three-Two-Ones, check out this post which details how to use them as warm ups or as exit tickets. Oh and no prep Three-Two-Ones for any text are available here.
Roots in Context
I detailed Roots in Context above as a week long activity, but you can also complete it in one day, it just takes a little longer. Truthfully, we usually complete Roots in Context in one day. Again, you can grab some no prep roots in context (Macbeth, “Story of an Hour”) in my TPT store. Or check it out in my free Bell Ringer Sampler.
Lessons in Close Reading
Lessons in Close Reading are based on Nancy Dean’s Voice Lessons in which you take a very short passage (could be as short as one sentence or it could be up to a paragraph) and ask students to focus on one very specific detail of the text like a simile or diction or contrast.
Task Cards
Task cards are another great way to use bell ringer activities to focus on your unit. These are simply cards (often reusable) that have a question or a task for students to work on quickly and independently. You could easily distribute characterization task cards or setting task cards before a lesson focusing on characterization or setting. Like Three-two-ones, task cards also work well as exit tickets.
Four Ways to Implement The Bell Ringer Activity
So hopefully, this post has given you lots of ideas about how you can implement bell ringer activities in High School English. There are so many options to get you students into a great and useful routine at the beginning of each class. Grab a free sampler of 10 different kinds of bell ringers you can implement today.
Related Resources
3 2 1 Strategy for High School of English
