High School English Bell Ringers Vol. 1, Vocabulary, Grammar & Literary Terms

Use this bundle of my popular bell ringers/warm-ups/mini-lessons to teach the Common Core-aligned grammar, literary term, and vocabulary skills your high school students need. This package of materials includes everything you’ll need to keep your students actively engaged at the start of each period.

Here’s how it works:

With M.U.G. Shot Mondays, students master Mechanics, Usage, and Grammar by working together to proofread real-world writing examples. These 38 weekly grammar editing sessions address the most common errors made in middle-school and high-school writing. Students write down the flawed sentence and then work together to edit/make corrections. After the class agrees on all of the edits made by the student writing at the board, go over the marks, explaining the rules that apply. After three sessions, collect the students’ papers and give points for accuracy.

On Lit. Term Tuesdays, class begins with a high-interest short lecture featuring classic literary devices paired with modern examples with which your students are certain to identify. Sure, everyone knows protagonist and antagonist, but have your students learned about anti-heroes (think: Walter White from Breaking Bad, and Dexter) or foils (Jude Law's Watson to Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes)? Freshen up their literary term knowledge with these once-a-week-lectures, ranging from five-to-15 minutes each. From Will Ferrell to Ferris Bueller, there are plenty of examples included in these lectures to help your students relate to the literary techniques used in our greatest classic tales. UPDATE: I've also included links to 19 video presentations (one per weekly lesson) to serve as lecturer notes/prep materials or flipped lesson materials. Feel free to use the videos to prep yourself for the bell-ringer lectures or share them directly with your students and I'll be your weekly virtual guest lecturer.

Then comes Words on Wednesday, a weekly lesson to build higher-level vocabulary in your college-bound students. These lessons feature words commonly used on the SAT that educated adults also use in their everyday lives. Even if your students aren’t bound for a university, they’ll still benefit from knowing these words as they enter the work force. Each lesson, which takes about 15 minutes, goes deep into understanding denotation and connotation of five words and includes definition, part of speech, synonym, antonym, and a sentence relevant to a teen audience. Instead of using a list of 10 words each week that students memorize and then promptly forget, I’ve found more success with going deep on five words. We discuss the words and use them in regular conversation. I’ve been delighted to see many of these words show up in our in-class writings, and students also excitedly point them out to me in passages that we read in class. This method helps words “stick” better than any other method I’ve tried in my 20+ years as a high school teacher.

On Thursdays, my classes take a break from the routine procedures and focus solely on our current unit of study.

Fridays? Why, S.S.R., of course; it’s the best way to end the week. Click here for my FREE materials on how to manage your students' quiet reading time with easy grading for you!

This bundle includes:

M.U.G. Vol. 1

M.U.G. Vol. 2

Lit. Terms

Vocabulary Builder/Words on Wed. Vol. 1

Vocabulary Builder/Words on Wed. Vol. 2

All five of these items are sold separately at my store for $7.99 each (or $39.95 total), but you'll save 25 percent if you buy this bundle.

Finally, due to customer requests, I now have a SECOND VOLUME OF BELL-RINGER MATERIALS now available. If you teach the same students in multiple years or just want to use something different with different grade levels, click HERE to check out my high school English bell-ringers, volume #2.

Finally, please note that item is also included in my English 9-10 full-year curriculum. If you already own the full-year download, please do not purchase this item here individually. If you’d like to receive this item plus everything else needed to teach 180 days of English 9 or English 10 at a deeply discounted price, click here to learn more about the full-year curriculum download.

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