Bell Work:

Students need a 100 page Spiral Notebook to record these Bell Work Activities.

Each day, they will begin by recording the Activities and Homework for the day; this will help parents see what we did for the day and will help support their student with assignments.  This will also help students who were unable to attend class keep up with classwork.  

Click on the pencil below to view the Bell Work format students should use each day:

MUG Shot Mondays:  Students master Mechanics, Usage, and Grammar by working together to proofread real-world writing examples. These 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, I'll share the edits, explaining the rules that apply. After three sessions, I collect the students’ papers and give points for accuracy. 

Lit Term Tuesdays:  High-interest bell-ringer lectures featuring classic literary devices paired with modern, pop-culture examples with which students are certain to identify. 

• Literary terms/devices covered include: theme, storytelling arc, exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, protagonist, antagonist, anti-hero, foil, point of view, first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, third person objective, rhetoric, ethos, pathos, logos, tone, mood, archetypes, diction, dialect, dialogue, figures of speech, figurative language, idiom, characterization, direct/indirect, static/dynamic, satire, parody, internal monologue, soliloquy, aside, simile, metaphor, extended metaphor, mixed metaphor, symbolism, denotation, connotation, verbal irony, situational irony, dramatic irony, personification, pathetic fallacy, foreshadow, foreshadowing, flashback, hyperbole, paradox.

Hump Day "Vocabulay":  Students use vocabulary acquisition strategies as they interact with a vocabulary from a variety of genres including Latin affixes and roots and grade-level vocabulary. 

Thinking Thursdays:  Activities that make students go "Hmmmm" will wake up brains and prepare them to use their noodles!

Freaky Friday:  Who knows what will happen, but something WILL happen.  :-)