Engage and Inspire with Daily Bell Ringers in the ELA Classroom

The last year has brought so many challenges to the classroom: online learning, social distancing, student and teacher mental health, and managing student absences. One of the biggest challenges is keeping students engaged in-person and during online learning. One way to engage students is with daily bell ringers in the ELA Classroom! Your students will be ready to learn with productive routines in ELA. Here are a few ways to engage and inspire with daily bell ringers in the ELA Classroom!

ROOT WORDS OF THE WEEK

Upper elementary and middle school standards include vocabulary, and at the heart of vocab is root words. Share root words or affixes with your students daily with examples and pictures!

The engagement starts when you let your students be creative. Use the bell ringers digitally and draw the images of the roots, prefixes, and suffixes with Google Draw or your favorite PDF annotation app. Notability is an iPad/Apple favorite!

For in-person or analog learners, get creative with these digital or ready to print ELA bell ringers and let your students showcase their artistic talent.

PICTURE OF THE WEEK

Inferences are a huge part of ELA curriculum! Yes, it’s important to read those informational passages and short fiction experts to make inferences.

However, for your engaging daily bell ringers in the ELA classroom, practice predicting and inferencing with images!

Post your picture of the week, and have students look at the clues to make as many inferences as possible. With the digital bell ringer bundle, you can post the picture of the week in Google Classroom or Seesaw or project to the whole class.

SENTENCE OF THE WEEK

Grammar doesn’t have to be boring! When you share a sentence of the week with your students through the digital or ready to print ELA bell ringers bundle.

Your students learn grammar skills by correcting an incorrect sentence. This daily ELA bellringer is an easy way to start your ELA block and review CCSS 4-7 language standards. Get your students engaged and inspired by having them share their answers in small groups or with the whole class on the board. If you’re participating in distance learning, have students share their screens on Zoom or Google Meet. Your students’ engagement will soar as they share their learning with one another!

VOCABULARY OF THE WEEK

Not only can you share words, write definitions, sentences, and draw pictures with the digital ELA bell ringer bundle, you can encourage your students to use their newfound words!

One way to engage and inspire students with daily ELA bell ringers is by challenging them to use vocab outside of class. How can they incorporate words into their daily conversations? What about in their writing? Have students check each other and see how often they hear their vocab words used outside of the ELA block!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

There are so many engaging quotes for literature and inspirational role models. Students love to discuss their own personal experiences. Give them time to write about the quote of the week in the digital or ready to print ELA bell ringers bundle before sharing in pairs or small groups. This strategy (think-pair-share) gives students a chance to think and write on their own before pairing up with a partner or small group. Then, they can share out as a pair or group without as much pressure.

Using digital or ready to print ELA bell ringers doesn’t have to be just a routine for you to take attendance or get things started. In fact, bell ringers can be engaging and fun for your students when they know what to expect. Follow these Monday-Friday bell ringers to help your students review and share whether they are online or in-person!

FREE WEEKS OF ELA BELL RINGERS

I know all classroom run differently, so it’s hard to know what will work in your classroom. Because of that I have made free versions of all bell ringers for you try out for free. Click on the image of the one you’d like sent straight to your inbox.