At the bell

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Have you ever wondered how to start class off? Have you ever to taken attendance or passed back graded papers and thought you were wasting valuable time? I was definitely in the same boat up till a year ago. Last year around this time I was in an early experience classroom where my cooperating teacher did this thing called bell work. Students walked into he classroom, sat down, and immediately started work that was on the board. I was shocked! This gave the teacher time to take attendance, pass back graded papers, check with people who were missing work, and still have students do something productive.

Now, I have learned since then that there are different ways to do bell work. A teacher can put a homework-like problem on the board for each class to do for extra practice; a teacher can put review questions on the board so that students continue to remember what they have learned within the year; or teachers could put test-prep questions on the board. My cooperating teacher was in the third category. She had juniors and seniors throughout her day so she did ACT-prep questions. This allowed the students to continually prepare for the ACT throughout the year. Also, it allowed for her to only need one question for each day; the juniors and seniors who were in different courses could still work on the ACT-prep questions.

Now I do not recommend that bell work should only be test-prep questions. Each teacher needs to determine what their class would benefit from. Freshman classes may not know all of the material to answer ACT-prep questions, so they may do better with either homework-like questions or review questions. I do, however, recommend that every teacher do some sort of bell work so that no amount of time, however small. will be wasted during class.