OneWord

This seems like it would work wonderfully as a bellwork assignment!

At this website -- OneWord -- students are shown one word on the screen. Students get 60 seconds to write as much as they possibly can about that one word.

Source

 I think the site features the one word each day, but I haven't visited it often enough during the course of just one day to figure this out yet (shame on me!). After you're done writing, you add your name and e-mail address, and submit your work. Students have a chance to read things other students have written after they submit their work. One of my philosophies is that people get to be better writers by reading other people's work, so I think this could work out nicely!

I'm still playing with this one and trying to figure it out, but it looks very promising! My main concern at this point is grading (my current students hate when I ask them to do something but don't take a grade for it!). I'm going to play with it and see if I can figure something out!

OneWord would make great English/writing bellwork. It could also be an outside of class quick-write assignment (on a blog, maybe?) if we can figure out some way to grade it!