Biology Warm Ups and Bell Ringers: Great Classroom Management Tool

Warm ups and bell ringers are definitely a "vintage" idea, but this tried and true classroom management tool is still effective for most classes.

Classroom management is one of my greatest strengths as a high school biology teacher. I walk into every class with a clear plan. Every single minute of instruction is accounted for before the bell rings. Over the years, I’ve learned that effective classroom management is just as essential as subject mastery, especially when teaching complex topics in biology. I strive to teach “bell to bell,” with pacing tailored to meet the needs and learning styles of my students.

But even seasoned teachers get thrown a curveball now and then.

A few years ago, I found myself with a particularly energetic group of 9th and 10th grade biology students. They were great kids—friendly, funny, and genuinely good-hearted—but they came to class every day bouncing off the walls. They weren’t disruptive in a disrespectful way, but their energy made it tough to settle in and start class on time. If you’ve ever taught high school science, you know how those first few minutes can feel: students chatting, catching up on missed work, asking about grades, turning in homework—it’s organized chaos at best.

That’s when I remembered an old favorite classroom tool I hadn’t used in a while: biology bell ringers.

Could a simple daily warm-up activity help refocus my students and establish a calmer, more productive start to class? And better yet, could I get them to keep a bell ringer notebook to track their progress?

The answer was a resounding YES! It worked.

Implementing daily biology warm-ups not only transformed the tone of my class, but it also helped reinforce key concepts and boosted student engagement from the moment they walked through the door.

What are the benefits?

You can turn this chaotic time of your class into a time of meaningful learning. Using bell ringers establishes a daily routine of having your students complete thought provoking and problem solving tasks during the first 5 minutes of the class.  Once the routine is established, students will enter the room and get right to work on the warm-up or bell-ringer activity. These warm-ups are designed to take 5-7 minutes to complete. It settles the students and provides the instructor a few minutes to carry out the tasks required at the beginning of a class.

It took a bit of time, but I now have sets of bell ringers for every chapter of a traditional high school biology class. Since most biology or life science textbooks are generally divided into ten units, I organized my warm up activities in the same fashion:

• Unit 1:  Introduction to Science (Scientific Method, Graphing, Chemistry, Biochemistry)
• Unit 2:  Cells
• Unit 3:  Ecology
• Unit 4:  Genetics
• Unit 5:  Evolution
• Unit 6:  Microorganisms and Fungi
• Unit 7:  Plants
• Unit 8:  Invertebrates
• Unit 9:  Chordates
• Unit 10:  The Human Body

All units have been added to my TPT store and can be viewed at this link.

The pages are printed landscape style. The pages look best if printed in color, but also look great if printed in black/white. Each activity is one-half page in size. Two identical warm-ups are printed per page in order to conserve paper. In this time saving classroom management strategy, all you have to do is print the pages and cut them in half.

The warm-ups/bell ringers require and measure a wide variety of skills: 

Compare and contrast
Identify and label
Define terms
Graphing and Tabling
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
 Computation
Short Answer
Listing
Research
Cause and Effect
 Drawing
Analyzing
Interpreting
Predicting
Fill in the Blank
Writing/Explaining

These half-page activities can be collected and quickly graded, or you might want to have your students keep a daily warm-up notebook. These warm-ups will make excellent additions to your interactive notebooks. An added benefit ... The completed warm-up notebook makes an excellent review for the semester exam!

I now have 41 sets of bell ringers in my TPT store. You can view them all at this link. 

They can be purchased individually, and they are arranged into four large unit bundles:

• Cells, Ecology, DNA, Genetics, and Evolution Bundle
• Viruses, Bacteria, Fungi, and Protists Bundle
• Animal Kingdom Bell Ringer Bundle
• Human Body Bundle

I hope these work as well for you as they did for me.

Have fun teaching!