Bellwork - What is it?

When I help deliver some of the tutor2u CPD events, I often refer to a concept called bellwork. So, what exactly is bellwork?

Bellwork is simply an activity that students complete as soon as they walk into the class before the ‘bell’ actually rings for the lesson. I used to call it the ‘early bird activity’.

The idea behind bellwork is that students are engaged in an activity as soon as they enter the room and are therefore focused on the subject. Bellwork also serves a number of other useful functions. It allows you to complete other activities (checking homework, preparing the lesson etc) before the lesson officially starts whilst the students are busy completing the bellwork activity. Also, I found that it sets the scene for the lesson and that students knew that as soon as they entered my classroom then they would be engaged in some sort of activity. I also found it much easier to get the lesson started as my students were not engaged in talking about the TV the night before.

Then, when the lesson officially starts you can move onto the normal starter activity.

Bellwork activities should normally last around 3 or 4 minutes and can be anything from an activity reviewing the previous lesson, a thought provoking question or an activity designed to get the students thinking about the lesson ahead.

Simple, but very, very effective….