Bell ringers are short, engaging activities used at the beginning of class to prepare students for learning and set the tone for the day. They can be used in various educational settings, including speech therapy sessions.
Benefits of Bell Ringers for Students
1. Establish a Consistent and Familiar Routine for Students: Students thrive on routine, and these warm-up activities provide that comforting structure right at the start. It sets a predictable tone, reducing anxiety and helping students transition smoothly into learning mode.
2. Mental Warm-Up: Bell ringers help students transition from the regular or special education classroom to the speech and language rooms, activating their brains and getting them ready to focus.
3. Vocabulary Building: Bell Ringers can introduce new Tier 2 vocabulary words and reinforce existing ones, expanding students’ language skills and set them up for success with academic vocabulary.
4. Review and Reinforcement: Warm-up activities can review and practice previously learned concepts, helping students solidify their understanding.
5. Engagement: Fun and engaging activities can capture students’ interest and make learning more enjoyable because we all know the benefits of keeping students engaged.
Benefits of Bell Ringers for SLPs
- Time Management: Bell ringers can help teachers manage their time effectively by ensuring a smooth start to the class. In addition, by assigning a session starter, speech and language pathologists are maximizing the time that they have with students.
- Student Engagement: Engaging activities can create a positive learning environment and help teachers connect with their students. In addition, activities can be done individually or in pairs to help build community and positive peer relationships.
- Differentiation: Bell ringers can be easily differentiated to accommodate students of varying abilities. Students will all be working on a similar activity so no one will stand out.
- Assessment: They can be used as a quick assessment tool to gauge students’ understanding for progress reports, daily data, IEP goals, etc.
- Routine: Consistent use of bell ringers can establish a routine and create a sense of predictability in the speech and language session.
- Attendance Documentation: Student work can be used to show student attendance and participation in speech and language sessions.
These daily warm-ups are a perfect fit in your speech and language sessions. Consistent use of these bell ringers helps students to transition between their regular education classes and the speech room, as well as allow students to anticipate what will happen in speech.
These session starters can be used with students of all ages as activities can target a variety of speech and language goals:
- Vocabulary – Use these warm up activities to practice labelling, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, categories, context clues, analogies, prefixes, suffixes, and roots, and more!
- Syntax – Practice combining sentences with conjunctions, irregular and regular noun plurals, regular and irregular past tense verb forms, pronouns, parts of speech and more!
- Phonological Awareness – Session starters can target rhyming skills, sound segmenting skills, blending, syllable counting, and more!
- Articulation – A quick warm-up articulation activity might include speech sound placement reminders, visuals, word lists, sentences, etc., depending on the student’s articulation goals.
- Narratives – Students could practice story grammar elements with images, identify missing story grammar elements, or complete unfinished stories.
In other words, there is no limit to the ways that these warm-ups can be used in speech sessions and customized to fit all of your students.
For Middle School Bell Ringers, to target all speech and language goals, check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Speech-Language-Bell-Ringers-for-Middle-School-Daily-Warm-Ups-Google-Slides-12280356.
For Elementary School Bell Ringers, to target all speech and language goals, check out these resource. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Speech-Language-Bell-Ringers-for-Grades-3-5-Warm-Ups-Google-Slides-Print-12302498
How can you use daily warm-ups to target speech and language goals in your speech sessions?
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