Here is a collection of our favorite “bell ringers,” “do nows” and “hooks” to grab students’ attention, along with examples from dozens of our daily lessons.
Share full article
By The Learning Network
Published Nov. 8, 2021 Updated Nov. 10, 2021How can you get your students interested in reading informational texts, whether the topic is Syria or sneakers, space exploration or statistics, surfing, superheroes or “the souls of Black girls”? How can you help them make connections between unfamiliar topics and their own lives? How can you scaffold complex ideas to make them accessible for a wide variety of learners?
We’ve had lots of practice answering these questions. Our editorial staff — all of us former teachers — comes up with a fresh before-reading activity, or “warm-up,” for every Lesson of the Day we publish. We now have over 700 of them, all based on Times articles chosen from across sections of the paper, and all free to students around the world.
Here we’ve combed through the collection, organized the strategies that we use most frequently and provided examples so that you can see how they work. Each is intended to be a brief activity — an appetizer before the main course. You can find them all listed here in this downloadable poster (PDF).
But we also hope to hear from you. Let us know in the comments section or by emailing us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com if you have other warm-up suggestions you think we should try. We’d love to lengthen this list!
What does coming of age mean to you? Related Article | Related Lesson Credit. June Canedo for The New York Times
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
