Having students work on a Bellringer (Do Now) at the beginning of class is a great strategy. It helps set a calm and productive tone for the entire day/period and helps you utilize your class time more effectively.

The issue is keeping track of all the student work.

If you collect the work at the end of the period, that’s a lot of paper! And it’s a lot of grading!!!

An alternative is to have the students keep their work on one paper for the whole week, and then collect it all on Friday. This requires students to stay organized (and not lose that one sheet of paper for the entire week!) But it also creates another issue – student organization on the paper!

Having students keep all their work, for each day’s bellringer, on one sheet of paper makes keeping track of it all SO frustrating. The students always bleed one problem into another. And trying to figure out what work goes with which question is so time-consuming and exhausting!

Also causing frustration is trying to figure out where their answers are.

And for whatever reason, getting them to number their problems it like asking them to swim the Suez Canal!

And why can’t students do the questions in sequential order?

How is it that numbers one and two are next to each other, but then beneath them are problems 6 and 14?? And number 3 is at the bottom but there is no number 4? How is this all possible?

A Solution

After months, nay years, of fighting this struggle, and trying to teach students to number their problems, and circle their answers, and keep their work organized… I finally surrendered and created a resource to help them with all of this.

The Bellringer (Do Now) Worksheet

The Bellringer Student Worksheet will help students keep their work organized, in order, and it has a column on the side for them to record their answers.

Grading will be quick and painless, and students will be less likely to skip problems or not show their work as tracking will be simplified for them.

It’s a free download here.

More Strategies to Help with the Start of Class