Art History Bell Ringers

I've been using bell ringers as a soft landing / transitional time since seeing the impact it made with my cooperating teacher during my student teaching at a 6-8 middle school building. Even with 40 minute classes, there was value to giving students time to make a mental shift from their other classes to art. 

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While she focused primarily on 3-5 minute sketches and doodles, I have been modifying my own use of this time to best fit the needs of my students. My current (and favorite) use of this time at the high school level is to sneak in bite sized chunks of art history.

I select an image that pairs with what we are doing in the classroom. We follow an inquiry-based model where students are given a series of daily question / prompts to get them connecting to and thinking about the art and artist. After 2-3 days of looking, I have them sketch the work and on the last day I give them the relevant details (title, artist name, date and fun facts).

This video highlights the way that I pair images and questions with projects we are doing in class.

If you are just getting started, you could recycle the same 5 questions each week with new artworks like this:

Day 1: What do you think this work is about? 

Day 2: How do you think this was made?

Day 3: What questions do you have about this work?

Day 4: Describe the work using the elements and principals of art

Day 5: Copy down information about the artwork (Title, Artist, Date, Size, Media, Country)

Teacher tip: I post these on google slides and make a new copy of the document every year. I "cover" the slides we have not gotten to yet and change the text from white to black each morning to reveal the new prompt.

I have several variations and themes for bell ringers here if you need help building your own. This is the original post created during our hybrid schedule in 2021.