This month's newsletter is all about how we start. And no, I will not be boring you with a list of resolutions. Instead, I want to suggest some ways that we can begin our day and begin our lessons. When we set the tone from the beginning, then our day can go much more smoothly. If you have any organization tips or any bell work that you have found engaging, please share at your next department meeting. We all need a collection of activities that work.

One of my favorite tools in Google is the use of Tasks. The application allows me to sync my email, to-do list, and calendar. I rarely have time to respond to every email the moment I read it; therefore, I can add it to my task list and a due date and can go back to it later. When tasks added to a calendar, you can receive a reminder as well.

I like starting my day by reviewing the calendar and to-do list so that I am reminded of meetings, events, or projects that need to be completed. This also reduced the number of sticky notes I had around my monitor.

Here are a few tech tools that might help you with an introductory activity in class. Sometimes our bell work is a review of the previous lesson and acts as a formative assessment and sometimes we want students to preview content. Each of the sites I have provided include activities that can be done in 5 - 15 minutes, depending on the prompt. Most are stimulus-based, meaning students have a text or visual that is the focus of the activity. Here are some bell work ideas:

• Writing Prompts that Don't Suck (the author's opinion and not necessarily mine)
  
• Three Act Math
  
• KQED "Do Now" (text/image based inquiry)
• Math Mistakes
  
• Science Picture of the Day
  
• NY Times "What's Going on in the Picture?"
  
• Political Cartoon of the Day
• Socrative