If coming up with quick, engaging warm-ups eats up too much of your time or turns into a last minute scramble before the bell, then buckle up. As a sixth-grade teacher, I’m always looking for practical ways to use AI to help reduce my workload, and I’ve found a game-changing way to use it for bell ringers. 

Today, I’m walking you step-by-step through how to use AI (ChatGPT & Canva) to create a year’s worth of bell ringers in about 15 minutes. It’s super quick and easy, and most importantly…it will save you time. 

Let’s dive in! 

Step 1: Design Your Bell Ringer Template

To use AI to create a year’s worth of bell ringers, first, you will need a template for your bell ringer. Canva makes it really easy, and you can choose from tons of template options. (Click here to view a few of my favorites).

*TIP* If you’re an educator, you can get access to a Canva Pro account for free. (Click here to learn more)

I added these sections to my template:

• Daily inspirational quote
• Date
• Warm up riddle
• Joke of the day
• Supplies
• Daily agenda
• Homework

Some of these sections, like the daily agenda and homework, will need to be filled in each week, but the other sections can be planned for in advance. 

But, instead of spending hours searching for age appropriate jokes, riddles, and inspirational quotes, we can use AI to generate them in minutes!

Step 2: Use AI to Generate Your Content

This is where AI can be your teaching assistant and really do the heavy lifting for you. To generate a year’s worth of jokes, riddles and inspirational quotes, I used ChatGPT. 

In ChatGPT, open up a new chat and start with this prompt to ensure you have the right formatting: 

“Starting on August 31, 2025, make me a table that includes the day of the week in the first column, the date and year in a second column. As you generate your list do NOT include any Saturdays or Sundays. Do this until June 29, 2026.”

Here’s the response ChatGPT generated: 

This will generate more than the 180 days that I need, but this just provides me with more bell ringer options. 

So now I have this start of a data table and the next step is to fill in the table with the other sections that I need. 

Let’s generate the inspiration quotes. Here is my prompt: 

“Please generate a list of inspirational quotes suitable for sixth graders. Make enough for each date you’ve provided. Put this in a spreadsheet column.”

This is what was generated: 

This is great because all of these quotes are perfect for my sixth graders and they are motivational and inspirational. 

You could ask it to generate authentic ones and include the authors, but you can customize the prompt to include that. 

You can see each time I make a request, it’s added to my table. This is the exact format I need in order to transfer it to my template in Canva seamlessly. 

Now, we have two more sections to go. Let’s create the riddles. Here is the prompt: 

“Please generate easy to answer riddles suitable for sixth graders for each day of the school year.”

Here is what ChatGPT generated (pardon my typo on the image below):

So, now my table is continuing the expand, but I have one problem. The riddles include the solution and I don’t want that to show, so I’m going to add in a follow up prompt: 

“Please make the answer to the riddle in a separate column.”

When we add all of these details to my Canva template, you’ll see why it needs to be separate. 

ChatGPT then generated a new table for me with the answers in a separate column: 

Lastly, we need to create the jokes of the day. Here is my prompt: 

“Finally, generate a joke of the day suitable for sixth graders to add to this spreadsheet.”

Here are the jokes that ChatGPT generated for me: 

I have that same problem again with the answer to the joke in the same column, so I’m going to add in a follow up prompt: 

“Please add the joke answer in a separate column.”

Super easy! Now I have the joke and answer in two separate columns. 

Now that we have a year’s worth of jokes, riddles, and quotes created, we are going to head back to Canva and add all of this content to individual slides for our bell ringers. 

We’re not copying and pasting all of this because that would take way too long! With Canva we can automatically fill in each one of our slides based on the table that ChatGPT helped us create. 

Step 3: Prepare Your Data for Canva

Now that I have all of the columns in my table filled in, I’m ready to download it. 

To do that, you can click the downward facing arrow in the upper right corner of the table and it will save the table as a CSV file, which is the format you will need for Canva. 

Step 4: Use Canva’s Bulk Create Feature

Now, let’s head back to Canva and use AI to create a year’s worth of bell ringers! Canva has an amazing tool called Bulk Create that lets you upload data and automatically generate designs with text filled in from that data.

To access this in Canva, navigate to the editor side panel on the left and select “Apps”. 

In the window that pops out, scroll down to the “Under More from Canva” section, select “Bulk Create”. 

Now that you have the Bulk Create tool open, we are going to upload that CSV file that we downloaded from ChatGPT with all of the data from the table.

Select “Upload Data” and find the CSV file on your desktop:

Now, we have all of these different data fields and we need to connect each one of these data fields to specific spots on this bell ringer template.

It’s really easy to connect the data to your elements. Let’s start with the “day” first. So you can see on my template that I have a text box with “Day” inside of it. Click on that text box, and a little toolbar will appear. Select the three dots and from the drop down menu that appears, choose “Connect Data”.

Then, you will see a list of all of the data that was uploaded via the CSV file. We are connecting the day, so I’m going to select “Day of the Week”.

Once that’s selected, you’ll see that data field listed above the text box which means that it is connected. 

Continue to follow the same process to connect the data to each element on the template. 

This process will look a little different for the joke and riddle elements because we have two data fields to connect for each one. 

To show you how to do this, let’s start with the riddle. 

I want the riddle question to show up in the element on the template, so I’m going to follow the same process above. Select the text, click on the three dots, scroll down to “Connect data”, and select “Riddle Question”. 

Now, I don’t want the riddle answers to show on this bell work slide. So what I like to do is hide the answer underneath. Underneath the riddle sticky note graphic, I’ve added a text box that is usually covered by the graphic. 

To connect the riddle answer data field, to this element, I’m going to follow the same steps. Click on the text, select the three dots, scroll down to “Connect data”, and select “Riddle Answer”.

You can see that the “Riddle Answer” is connected to the element and to hide it, I’m just going to drag the sticky note graphic down to cover it. 

For the joke element, I’m going to follow the same process as the riddle question and answer. I added a text box behind the sticky note graphic and will connect each data field and hide the joke answer behind the graphic. 

Now that we have each one of our data fields connected to an element on our bell ringer template, we’re ready to click continue. 

As you can see, it’s now going to be populating a new design file with all of this data for every single day of the school year, and it’s going to be generating 216 designs. 

What that means is this bell ringer template is going to be regenerated again and again and again as a new page. So, I’m going to click generate and make the magic happen! 

When I click generate, a message appears on the top of the screen letting me know that it created a new folder. So, I’m going to go ahead and click on that new folder and find the new file with all of my bell work in it. 

Once I open up the new file that was just created, we can see the magic. In seconds it created 216 unique slides with all of the information that ChatGPT generated for us. 

The date, day, joke, riddle, and quote are all filled in for 216 days and all I need to do is add in the daily agenda, homework details, and supplies list. 

This process of using AI to create a year’s worth of bell ringers will save you a ton of time and streamline your workflow, but it also ensures that your bell ringers are engaging and it saves you the stress of throwing together one last minute. 

You can reuse or adapt these templates year after year. You can also customize your prompts in ChatGPT to include holiday themes or connect them to school events. 

We hope you found this tip helpful and that you start creating magic for yourself and your students with Canva’s bulk create! 

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