What I'm Doing Differently in My Classroom This Year
Four small teaching moves—better bell ringers, brain breaks, exit tickets, and learning on our feet—can help students stay curious, focused, and engaged throughout the class period.
This year feels a little different.
For the first time in three years, I will be teaching both 9th grade Earth and Space Science and 11th grade Chemistry. That means freshmen who will be learning how high school works and juniors dealing with abstract concepts, busy schedules, jobs, sports, phones, stress, and all the other things teenagers carry into class before we even say, “Take out your Chromies, homies.”
So this year, I’m trying to be more intentional.
Not perfect or revolutionary, but more intentional about the small moments that shape my students’ learning.
After 23 years in the classroom, I know how easy it is to fall into the pattern of explaining, assigning, circulating, reminding, collecting, grading, and wondering why students still forgot 90% of it by Friday.
I also know that student engagement does not happen automatically just because I planned what seems like a great lesson in my mind.
This year, I want to make sure students are doing more while learning.
Here are four things I’m doing differently.
1. Starting Class with Better Bell Ringers
I’ve always used bell ringers, but if I’m being honest, some were basically “answer this question while I take attendance and find my coffee cup.”
This year, I want my bell ringers to be more intentional and more engaging. This year, I will stop underestimating the importance of those first few minutes of class and accept the fact that many students do not walk into the classroom ready to learn from the go. Their bodies entered, but their brains may still be thinking about something else.
A good bell ringer is needed to shift students into thinking mode.
One example is Mystery Object.
For Earth and Space Science, I might place a strange rock, satellite image, fossil, weather map, or mystery photo on the screen and ask students: What do you notice? What do you think this is? How might it connect to today’s lesson?
For Chemistry, I might show a sealed container, a weird lab setup, a molecular model, or a surprising image of a reaction and ask students to predict what is happening.
The point is not to entertain students with random stuff. The point is to spark curiosity, activate prior knowledge, and give students a reason to lean into the lesson before I start explaining.
2. Breaking Up Longer Activities with Brain Breaks
Longer activities are important. I will still use labs, group work, and projects because students love and learn from them.
But students are not machines and their attention fades.
This year, I want to build in 90-second brain breaks before the room starts drifting. Some will be quick physical resets. Some will have a content-theme if it makes sense and i can conjure one.
During an Earth and Space Science astronomy unit, I might use a quick Space Mission brain break: students do a rocket launch squat and jump, moonwalk backward, dodge imaginary meteors, reach in “zero gravity,” and freeze in a space explorer pose.
In Chemistry, I could adapt this to particles: students move tightly together for a solid, slide past each other for a liquid, spread out for a gas, and freeze when I call out a phase change.
Not to be silly for the sake of silliness—the point is to reset attention, add movement, and get students back to learning with more energy.
3. Doing More Exit Tickets, Even When I’m Tired
This is the one I know I need to improve.
At the end of class, I often know an exit ticket would help. I know it would show me what students understood. I know it would make the lesson end with thinking instead of the sacred ritual of lining up at the door six minutes early.
But sometimes I’m tired and my brain is already trying to remember what I’m supposed to do next period.
Still, this year I want to do more exit tickets because they are one of the simplest ways to check learning before students leave.
One example is 3-2-1 Recall.
Students write:
Three things they remember.
Two connections they can make.
One question they still have.
For Earth and Space Science, this might come after a lesson on convection currents, weather systems, moon phases, or renewable resources. For Chemistry, it could follow stoichiometry, bonding, gas laws, or chemical reactions.
No notes during the first round to make it into retrieval practice. Then students can compare with a partner to check what they missed.
It is quick, simple, and useful. It helps them (and me) identify what stuck, what didn’t, and what needs more brain attention.
4. Incorporating More “Learning on Our Feet”
Students sit too much.
And while I am not planning to turn my science classroom into a fitness studio, I do want more moments where students physically move to show their thinking.
Movement activities don’t just wake students up. Moving the body moves more blood and more effective blood flow oxygenates the brain more effectively, leading to better reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. Besides, a long-standing theory that learning has to happen in a chair does not exist.
Enter Trash Ball Recall—a review activity I love, but haven’t used in recent years.
The teacher puts students into small groups and gives each group a question or clue. The answer should be a one-word concept, vocabulary term, process, or category. Students quietly discuss, write their answer on a sheet of paper, and justify their thinking before turning it in.
If the group gets the answer correct, they get one chance to crumple the paper and shoot it into the trash can for an extra point.
That is Trash Ball Recall in a nutshell.
The trick is to make the clue require thinking, not just memorization. Instead of asking, “What is convection?” I might ask, “Which process explains warm material rising, cooling, sinking, and creating circular motion?” Now students have to retrieve the concept from an example.
In Earth and Space Science, I might use clues like:
“A city keeps getting hotter than the rural land around it because concrete and asphalt absorb and hold heat.”
Answer: heat island
“Air moves from the ocean, rises over a mountain, drops moisture, and leaves dry land on the other side.”
Answer: rain shadow
“The Moon appears to change shape during the month, even though half of it is always lit by the Sun.”
Answer: moon phases
In Chemistry, I could use clues for reaction types, bonding, particle diagrams, lab safety, or stoichiometry. For example:
“Atoms transfer electrons, creating oppositely charged particles that attract.”
Answer: ionic bonding or ions
“A substance changes form, but the particles do not become a new substance.”
Answer: physical change
“The amount of matter before and after a reaction stays the same, even when the substances look different.”
Answer: conservation of mass/matter
Students are not just guessing a word. They are discussing evidence, matching examples to concepts, defending their thinking, and retrieving information from memory. The trash shot adds movement and fun, but the real learning happens before the paper ever leaves their hands.
“Learning on our feet” is not chaos by design, but thinking that incorporates movement.
A More Impactful School Year
None of these changes are huge.
A better bell ringer.
A two-minute brain break.
A quick exit ticket.
A movement activity.
But such small moves can change the entire feel; the vibe of a classroom. They help students start with curiosity, stay mentally present during longer activities, retrieve what they learned before they leave, and physically engage with ideas instead of just sitting through them.
In reality, this year I want more curiosity, more thinking, more energy, and more deeper learning.
I want more of my students doing something meaningful with the learning.
Because whether I’m teaching freshmen Earth and Space Science or juniors Chemistry, the goal is the same: help students become better learners, not just better assignment-completers.
This year, I’m trying to live the Spark-Wire-Fire Framework intentionally in my own classroom.
One bell ringer, brain break, exit ticket, and movement activity at a time.
What are you doing differently this year? Leave a comment!
If you want simple ways to turn quiet work into deeper thinking, Spark. Wire. Fire. available on Amazon includes 100+ ready-to-use activities for curiosity, memory, and application. Paperback regular price: $19.95.
The Master Teacher Toolkit app gives you classroom activities you can launch and display instantly when you need something better than “finish this quietly.”
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And, they actually remember what they learned using memory palaces! This series of lessons (which can be used as classroom handouts) walks students through creating their first memory palace, filling it with information they need to learn, and using it to train their memories. It also contains short readings, a video lesson, memory palace examples, and practice drills.
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