How to Teach Grammar Through Daily Bell-Ringers

Let's face it ... grammar lessons have a bit of a reputation. Students perceived the unit to be dry and boring, and the large number of different grammar topics can feel overwhelming to tackle all at once.

Over the years, I've found an effective approach to teaching grammar in middle and high school ELA. Rather than offer a standalone grammar unit, I now prefer to integrate grammar instruction in a bite-sized daily routine to be used throughout the year. After all, ELA is a marathon, not a sprint! I find a slow-and-steady strategy gives much-needed structure to my day and provides students with more consistent opportunities to practice and refine their grammar skills.

If you're wondering how to shake up your own approach to teaching grammar, here's how I incorporate daily grammar bell-ringers in middle or high school ELA!

Program Overview:

With a grammar bell-ringer routine, each week is themed around a central skill or grammar concept (such as capitalization). Students begin by exploring the concept. Then, throughout the week, they practice and apply their new skills through bite-sized tasks and activities. Grammar bell-ringers are designed to take only 5 to 10 minutes a day, which makes them a perfect warm-up for the rest of your class!

I like to prepare all my materials for the week at once - that way, I'm ready for a smooth start! Each week has a dedicated student handout that keeps learners focused and engaged!

TIP: If you keep your students' grammar bell-ringer work in a dedicated folder in the classroom, you can quickly do periodic spot-checks. This helps you see if they have mastered each concept, or if you need to go back for further review.

Monday Mastery:

On Mondays, students begin to master the grammar skill for the week. I like to briefly introduce each concept directly with a quick, two-slide presentation. Directly teaching students about the relevant grammar rules and reviewing clear examples of each concept sets them up with the foundation for the rest of the week!

From here, I find students benefit from a bit of practice time. After you finish the lesson, students can spend a few minutes creating personal examples of each grammar concept and reviewing their notes. They can refer back to their examples and notes as they complete the rest of the weekly activities!

Tuesday Task:

For Tuesday's activity, students apply the weekly grammar concept in context by completing short, skill-based tasks. These tasks can include identifying errors, choosing the correct form, or rewriting sentences.

For example, when focusing on capitalization, I might provide students with several sentences where names, proper nouns, or sentence beginnings are not capitalized and have them correct the errors. To wrap up, students can review their work with a peer or check their responses during a class discussion.

Wednesday Writing:

I notice that sometimes, middle and high school students are able to identify and correct grammar issues in provided examples, but this learning does not always transfer to their own writing. This is why I like to provide an authentic, intentional opportunity for students to focus on grammar as part of the writing process.

On Wednesdays, students deepen their understanding of the week's targeted grammar concept. Quality writing prompts allow students to express their own voice, extend their writing skills, share creative ideas, and allow them to practice new concepts in a structured and low-stakes way.

Thursday Team-Up:

One of my favorite tricks to teach grammar in middle school ELA is to incorporate opportunities for play into each week's task. I especially recommend allowing students to apply the week's concept through a game or collaborative activity! For the Thursday Team-Up, students work together in pairs or small groups to complete an escape room-style puzzle, centered on the week's grammar topic.

Each challenge is set up to reinforce students' understanding of the week's targeted grammar skill. Working together, they must identify grammar errors related to the weekly concept hidden within the challenges. Once the challenge has been completed correctly, a mystery code is revealed that will help them “escape!"

Friday Fix-Up:

As the week wraps up, I like to incorporate one final learning activity to help students focus on their grammar learning. During the Friday Fix-Up, students read a high-interest paragraph and reinforce their

learning by identifying and correcting errors related to their weekly grammar topic.

Imagine your students reading about:

Intriguing laws from around the world, while identifying the correct use of to, too, and two
Changes in the ways people have listened to music throughout history, while fixing comma splice errors
The processes involved in making chocolate, while converting passive voice to active voice

This final activity helps solidify students' grammar skills in a real-world context and allows them one more opportunity to practice before moving on to a new concept next week!

Over the course of the week, students will have implemented their skills in increasingly challenging ways, so that by Friday, students are able to synthesize what they have learned and demonstrate their understanding.

Ready to try out grammar bell-ringers in your ELA classroom? Learn more about the full-year program by clicking here!