Quality bell ringers are crucial — quick activities to get students going at the beginning of class, when the bell has just rung.

For these first five or ten minutes of class (OK, probably more the five than the ten), we have our students’ most attention. It’s the most focused they’ll likely be for us all day.

If we squander that time, the rest of our time with them suffers.  

So what do we need?  We need a HOOK!  We need something that catches their attention and is thought-provoking.  It can be a statement, a picture, or even a quote.

• Put a photo up.  It could be random but ties into the lesson of the day

• Write a statement that causes controversy.

• Display a link or a QR code to see if students scan it or go to the link.

The idea is that we engage our students from the first moment that they walk into the room and make them want to take part, and dive into the work of the day. 

The traditional model for bell ringer activities — the first activities students do before starting into the substance of the class — is to do some basic, quick questions:

• Simple problems in math

• Verb conjugations in foreign language

• Comprehension questions in English/language arts

• Review questions from the previous day’s history lesson

So, so forgettable. So easy to do without any real thinking.

10 ideas for great digital bell ringer activities

Whether you have digital devices for your students or not, these should stimulate some new ideas for kicking off class in an engaging way:

1. Add speech bubbles to a historic photo.

Add a new twist to a lesson by letting students speak — or think — for the characters. My favorite way to do this is with Google Drawings (for creating individual images) or Google Slides (for having each student create a slide in a shared presentation). Do an image search for a historic photo and add that photo to the drawing or slide. Then add speech bubbles. (If using Drawings/Slides, it’s in the shapes under the “callouts” category.) This is higher-order thinking! Students must know their facts and understand the people involved very well to be able to think for them. Kick the Depth of Knowledge level up even higher by having students justify their thinking and explain why they wrote what they did.

Example: Washington crossing the Delaware. Find the historic painting and add a thought bubble for Washington. (Then, add a thought bubble for a soldier too!)

Resource: Caption This! A fun, deep-thinking Google Drawings activity

2. Ask a character/historic figure a question.

What if students could ask someone they’re studying a question? What would they ask, and how would that person likely respond? This is another that can be done quickly and easily in Google Slides or Drawings. Let students take a photo of themselves using Insert > Image > Take a snapshot. Then, use the image search to find a photo of the person to whom they’ll ask the question. Add speech bubbles to ask questions. Students could ask one question with one answer from the character/historic figure, or they could do a back-and-forth with several photos.

Example: Asking Sir Isaac Newton a question about how he concluded that gravity was due to the pull from the earth.

3. Create a flowchart.

Sticking with the Google Slides/Drawings idea, have students express their understanding of a concept with a flowchart. This can easily be done with shapes and arrows (found under the line tool) in Slides and Drawings. A single line throughout a flowchart makes for more of a timeline and less of a flowchart, so any time it can branch off, the flowchart is made more interesting! (Pro tip: copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) the shapes and arrows to save time.)

Example: Go through the process of deciding what to have for lunch and all of the decisions made in that process.

Resource: Deeper thinking with timeline projects

4. Make comic strips out of webcam photos.

Those webcams don’t have to be just for selfie-style photos (especially those with peace fingers and duck lips …). Have students back away from the camera and pose to recreate scenes of what you’re studying. Or, have them sit side by side and have a discussion. This makes the students the stars of their own comic strips!

Example: Recreating a scene from a story or having a discussion about something they’re learning in class.

Resource: Crash! Bang! Boom! How to add Google Drawings comic strips to your class

5. Create a quick animation.

Google Slides (or PowerPoint or any presentation slide tool) can be turned into a simple stop-motion animation tool. Create the first slide in your animation, then duplicate it, then move something slightly in the second slide. Duplicate the second slide and move something slightly in the third. Continue duplicating and moving until your animation is complete. Once your students have the hang of this, they can make animations pretty quickly.

Example: Recreating historic battles with moving maps (here’s a brief, incomplete example of the Battle of Little Big Horn) or showing how a math problem is completed.

Resource: Learning in motion: EASY stop-motion animation with Google Slides

6. Create BookSnaps of what you’re reading.

In BookSnaps, students find a passage from a book they’re reading that resonates with them. They snap a picture of it and annotate on it, underlining and adding text reflections and including fun things like emojis and Bitmojis (optional). There are variations of these, like MathSnaps, ScienceSnaps and even GratitudeSnaps. Snapchat is one tool many teachers and students use to create these annotations. (If you use Snapchat to do them, you don’t even have to follow each other or post it to Snapchat … just use the app to create the image!) If you don’t want to use Snapchat, a take a snapshot  (Insert > Image > Take a snapshot) using Google Slides or Drawings and add the annotations. See more about BookSnaps on the Twitter hashtag (#BookSnaps).

Example: Reflect on a reading in a book with a BookSnap. Explain parts of a math problem with a MathSnap. Show what’s happening in a science lab with a ScienceSnap.

Resource: #Booksnaps- How-To Videos

7. Shared slide presentations.

Google Slides doesn’t have to be used just to do presentations in front of the class! Create a slide presentation with enough slides for each student in the class. Then share that slide presentation with the class using the blue “Share” button. (Be sure to use the “Get shareable link” button and choose “Anyone with the link can edit” or “Anyone from <your school district> can edit” from the dropdown menu.) Each student gets a slide where he/she can do his/her own work. But you’re also creating a whole class file. Students love to see what each other has put on the other slides, and it’s a great place to interact through comments. Here’s a shared slide presentation I did in a workshop where participants wrote about their ideal vacation destination.

Example: Finding quick facts/photos online about a topic you’ll discuss in class that day.

Resource: Student collaboration in shared Google Slides

8. Ask students “What if …” using a Flipgrid video grid.

It’s always fascinating to see what students imagine when their minds are allowed to wander. An educator from Australia, Bronwyn Joyce, has gotten in the habit of asking her students — and students around the world — “What if?”. Her prompts have elicited more than 1,000 videos and have prompted interesting discussions about the world’s problems. On a smaller scale (in the classroom with just your students), this can be an interesting way to kick off a class.

Example: Letting students speculate what would happen if history was different, or if a character did something differently in a story, or what they would do if …

Resource: Catch the Flipgrid fever! 30+ ways to use Flipgrid in your class

Click the image to see the What If ... Flipgrid video grid by Bronwyn Joyce. 

9. Create Icon boards.

I created icon boards as a way to simplify the infographic process. Think of icon boards as “infographics LITE” or “infographics when you’re in a hurry.”

The “Great Big Icon Board.” Click here for the template in Google Slides.

You can use Google Slides to create your own icon boards — or just use the templates included in this post to copy and distribute mine.

Icon boards include an open space for students to organize what they’re learning visually, combining text and images. They include plenty of icons that students would likely use from sources like The Noun Project or Flat Icon.

The icons — as well as shapes, text boxes and other elements — are placed in the workspace around the board. They’re not actually on the board until students move them there. Think of it like things sitting around your paper on a desk.

Whether you create your own icon boards or use my pre-created templates, there are a few simple steps to using them.

(If you’re using one of my templates, you’ll need to make a copy of your own using the links above first.)

1. Distribute the icon boards to students. The easiest way is creating an assignment in Google Classroom and attaching the file to the assignment (choose “Make a copy for each student”). Other options include using the blue “Share” button and getting a clickable link, then changing the word “edit” and anything after it to say “copy” in the URL … OR … creating a short URL students can type in with a service like TinyURL.com or bitly.com.

2. Students open their boards (through Google Classroom or the method you choose).

3. Students organize their ideas using the items you’ve placed in the space around the board.

4. Students add additional items, like icons, shapes, text boxes, etc. that they might need.

Resource: Google Slides icon boards for low-prep, visual thinking

10. Do a shared mind map brainstorm with AWWApp.

Students can interact in a shared whiteboard in AWWApp (awwapp.com). They can draw with their finger (or a mouse or a laptop/Chromebook touchpad). If you have a touchscreen available, this is a really easy, collaborative way for students to sketch out and share their ideas. Because the whiteboards are collaborative, they can share whiteboards with others — students in other classes or anyone around the world — so they can collaborate together.

Example: Jot down all of the words that best describe a character. Write out all of the questions they have about solving a certain kind of math problem.

Resource: 10 ways to collaborate digitally + visually in class

For more great info check out the rest of this article at: https://ditchthattextbook.com/