Once students have the foundation of rhetorical situation and argumentation and are moving into rhetorical analysis, I like to introduce bell ringers built specifically around skill review. In my other English classes I use independent reading, vocabulary work, grammar practice, or journaling as bell ringers, and those work well for younger students, but in AP Language I get more out of maximizing that time with focused skill review. There’s a lot of exam content to cover by the May test date, and I’d rather have students practicing in small daily doses than lose whole days to test prep in April and May.
My classes are 42 minutes, so I built these to run in about five minutes, with a single slide that stays on the board the whole time; I don’t want to be switching slides or passing out papers while I’m also taking attendance and checking in with students in the hallway.
Each week has a theme (the first FREE set is built around the Civil Rights Movement) chosen for relevance and engagement, and each day of the week has a consistent skill focus. Monday is rhetorical situation, working from a short passage. Tuesday is tone analysis, focused on the effect of shifts in tone. Wednesday is visual argument analysis, useful groundwork for the synthesis unit later on. Thursday is a writing skill tip pulled from patterns I’ve noticed in student writing over the years. Friday is multiple choice practice: two AP-style, four-choice questions tied to the week’s theme, which we go over together.
Students keep a single handout for the week (I have a few styles, including a doodle-notes version) and turn it in on Friday. After each day’s prompt, I show an answer slide so students can see different approaches, with notes underneath for me that aren’t visible in presentation mode.
This particular set bridges rhetorical situation into rhetorical analysis. I have a second set that bridges rhetorical analysis into argument, a different game-board style set I used before I built these that’s still great for developing arguments, and a synthesis set I’m proud of, since short synthesis practice is hard to design well. An exam-prep set is still on my list to build.