August 2017

Learned Lessons Teaching Materials 6:40 PM No Comments

Life Science Guided Notes: biology notes and PowerPoints

I wrote these for middle school Life Science and high school Biology teachers who are tired of watching students copy slides word for word. Students fill in the notes while you teach, and by the end of the year they have one organized set of notes for every unit.

Life Science & Biology Guided Notes and PowerPoints: Keep Students Organized, Engaged, and Ready for Test Day

Teaching Life Science means covering a lot of content, from cells and heredity to ecology and body systems. Keeping students organized and on pace through all of it can be a challenge. That’s where these NGSS-aligned Life Science & Biology Guided Notes and PowerPoints come in!

These interactive guided notes are designed for the teacher input section of your lesson. Students follow along as you present, and they leave each unit with a complete, organized set of notes they can use for assignments, studying, and review, both in class and at home.

🧬 Shop Life Science Guided Notes & PowerPoints

💰 Save more! This resource is also included in the LIFE SCIENCE MEGA BUNDLE.

What’s Included

✔ Student Guided Notes Pages with activities, key questions, and graphic organizers
✔ Teacher Guided Notes Pages so you always have the answers at your fingertips
✔ PowerPoints to go with each set of guided notes
✔ Anticipatory Guides for people, places, and vocabulary
✔ General Science Graphic Organizers for each unit

Units Covered

🔬 Science Inquiry
⚛️ Elements of Life
🦠 Cells
🧬 Reproduction and Heredity
🌱 Plants, Life Cycles, and Classification
🌎 Ecology
🦎 Adaptations
❤️ Body Systems, Disease, and Healthy Lifestyles
💧 The Water Cycle

Why Guided Notes Work

As a teacher, I always looked for ways to give students background information in an engaging format that kept them organized. Guided notes do exactly that. Students stay focused during instruction because they’re actively filling in key ideas, and you stay on pace because everyone is on the same page, literally!

Many students also hold onto their guided notes as reference packets for state testing at the end of the year.

10 Ways to Use These Guided Notes in Your Classroom

1. Guided Notes
Keep notes organized and make sure students are following along during the teacher input section of the lesson.

2. Embedded Activities
Each unit includes built-in activities to keep students engaged. Use them in class or assign them as daily homework.

3. Reflection Questions
Get students thinking about how the new material applies to the real world.

4. Unit Background
Print and have students follow along during a short daily class discussion. They stay engaged and leave with organized notes.

5. Interactive Notebook Inserts
Print two to a page and have students paste them into their interactive notebooks as a quick reference sheet.

6. Study Guide
Have students highlight key information and use the notes to guide their studying before each unit test.

7. State Test Review
Pull out the notes at the end of the year and use them as a guide for state test prep.

8. AP Exam Overview
Use the notes as a guide for AP exam review.

9. Research Guide
Students can reference key ideas from their notes when completing activities and research projects.

10. Graphic Organizers
Use the graphic organizer inserts to help students reflect on and apply what they’ve learned, as class activities or homework review.

Ready to Simplify Your Life Science Planning?

Give your students the structure they need to succeed, and give yourself more time back in your week.

🧬 Get the Life Science Guided Notes & PowerPoints

💰 Get Everything in the Life Science MEGA Bundle

Other Resources to Check Out

🔬 More Science Guided Notes
🧪 Science MEGA Bundles
🌎 Social Studies MEGA Bundles

Happy Planning,
Learned Lessons

Life science and biology guided notes with PowerPoint lessons

A tip from my classroom

Before you start a new unit, have students use the anticipatory guide to mark what they think they already know. Keep it in the front of their notes. On review day, have them go back to it and fix anything they got wrong at the start. They can see how much they learned, and you can see which ideas still need another pass.

Find guided notes for every subject I teach in this guide.

See every guided notes and PowerPoint resource in my shop: browse the collection.

Find a year-long curriculum designed for middle and high school classrooms.

More Resources from Learned Lessons Teaching Materials
✔ Guided Notes & PowerPoints
✔ Bell Ringers & Warm-Ups
✔ Escape Rooms
✔ Word Walls
✔ Choice Boards
✔ Collaborative Posters
✔ DBQs
✔ Mapping Activities
✔ Assessments
✔ Digital Google Classroom Resources

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American History Guided Notes: interactive notes bundle

These are the guided notes I'd hand any U.S. History teacher who is starting the year from scratch. They run from the American colonies through Reconstruction, with a PowerPoint for each unit and a Google version for digital classes, so students follow along and leave with notes they can study from.

Early U.S. History guided notes and PowerPoints bundle, Colonial America to Reconstruction.

Also part of Early American History MEGA BUNDLE

Early American history guided notes and PowerPoint lessons covering the colonies through Reconstruction

Let's be honest about notes in history class

Every history teacher knows the moment. You put up a slide on the Stamp Act, turn around, and half the class is copying every single word while the other half has quietly checked out. Ten minutes later, almost nobody can tell you why the colonists were so upset.
Note-taking was the part of teaching social studies I wrestled with the most. Some kids wrote too much, some wrote nothing, and very few walked away with notes they could actually study from. So I started building guided notes that met students in the middle. That work grew into my Early U.S. History Guided Notes Bundle, and I want to walk you through what's in it and how I'd use it.

Why guided notes actually work

Guided notes hand students a frame. The big ideas are already laid out on the page, and students fill in the missing pieces while you teach. Instead of racing to copy a slide, they're listening for something specific.
That small change makes a big difference for struggling readers, students with IEPs, and English learners. It helps your strongest students too, because their notes come out organized enough to review the night before a test.
It also helps you. When everyone is working from the same page, it's easy to see who's keeping up and who needs you to stop by their desk.

What's inside the bundle

The bundle covers Colonial America through Reconstruction in 13 units, about 560 pages of guided notes and PowerPoints in all. Each unit comes with an editable PowerPoint, printable student notes, a teacher answer key, and review materials. You get direct PDF downloads plus links to Google and Dropbox versions, so it works whether your students are on paper, on Chromebooks, or a mix of both.

Here's the run of units, in order:

It's listed for grades 4 through 10, and most teachers use it in 8th grade and 10th grade U.S. History. Homeschool families use it too.

How I'd use it in a real classroom

You don't have to use these notes the same way every day. Here are a few ways teachers have made them fit their own rooms.

As your daily lesson. Pull up the PowerPoint, pass out the notes, and teach. Stop after each section for a quick turn-and-talk so students process before you move on.
For absent students. Post the digital version in Google Classroom. A student who missed Tuesday can catch up on their own and come back ready.
On sub days. Leave the slides and the notes. Your sub doesn't have to be a history expert to keep the class moving, and you come back to completed work instead of a wasted day.
For differentiation. Give some students a partly completed page, or pair them with a buddy. The answer key makes it easy to build these versions quickly.
Before the test. Have students use their finished notes with the unit review materials. They already have a study guide because they built it during class.

Because the PowerPoints are editable, you can also drop in your own primary sources, local history, or the vocabulary your district emphasizes.

What teachers are saying

The bundle has a 4.7 star rating from 30 teachers on TPT, and the reviews say it better than I can.
An 8th grade teacher in Texas who works with students with autism said the videos give her voice a break, and give her students a break from her voice. (Every teacher reading this just nodded.)
Another teacher who uses it in 8th and 11th grade shared that she'd tried other guided notes and was usually let down. Now her students actually ask to go back to "the other notes" because they're easier to use.
A homeschool mom said both of her kids were interested and engaged, and a 10th grade teacher called it helpful and engaging for her students.

Ready to take notes off your plate?

If you're planning a U.S. History course, or just tired of rebuilding the same notes every year, this bundle gives you a full year of structure from Jamestown to the end of Reconstruction. Bought as a bundle, it's $29 instead of $53.50 for the units on their own, a savings of $24.50.
Take a look at the Early U.S. History Guided Notes Bundle on TPT
Want even more? The bundle is also part of my Early American History MEGA BUNDLE, which adds more activities to go with the notes.

Happy teaching,

A tip from my classroom

Keep a timeline on the wall that grows with the notes. When you finish a unit, have a few students add the three or four biggest events from their notes to it. By spring, students can look up and see how the Stamp Act connects to the Constitution and how the Missouri Compromise leads to the Civil War.

Find guided notes for every subject I teach in this guide.

See every guided notes and PowerPoint resource in my shop: browse the collection.

Find a year-long curriculum designed for middle and high school classrooms.

Stay Connected
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Life Science Outline Notes: just the essentials

Some students don't need another full set of notes. They need the key ideas on one page so they can review before a test. That's why I made these short outlines for every Life Science unit, from cells and heredity to ecology and body systems.

I used them for unit review, test prep and summer school, and students glued them into their notebooks as quick reference sheets. Each one has a print copy and a Google version.

Life science Just the Essentials content outlines

COVERS ALL CONTENT IN LIFE SCIENCE NEXT GENERATION STANDARDS

How I use it

This JUST THE ESSENTIALS packet is a new and engaging way to create a quick reference study guide, conduct test prep, or just give students an opportunity to reference key concepts throughout a unit. The packet includes an overview of the essential content in each unit covered in Next Generation Science standards. Each unit set includes the most important information to know in an easy to understand and sequential format. There are also eight graphic organizers that can be used with each unit to have students sequence events, research cause and effect relationships, organize vocabulary words, apply scientific practices, apply principles of engineering. This is part of a BUNDLE, LIFE SCIENCE MEGA BUNDLE AND Earth, Life, Physical Science Integrated MEGA BUNDLE- Next Generation Science!

What's inside

Included with Purchase

64 pages of Just the Essentials
8 Literacy Graphic Organizers (4 Print and 4 Digital, Google Link)
8 Science Practices and Next Generation Engineering Design Graphic Organizers (4 Print and 4 Digital with Google Link)
Scientific Inquiry Just the Essentials Outlines with Google Link
Elements of Life Just the Essentials Outlines with Google Link
Water Cycle Just the Essentials Outlines with Google Link
Cells Just the Essentials Outlines with Google Link
Reproduction and Heredity Just the Essentials Outlines with Google Link

How I'd use this

Hand out the outline at the start of a unit, not just at the end. Students highlight each idea the first time it comes up in class. By test day, anything still unhighlighted is what they need to go back and study.

See all my outline notes sets in one place.

See every Life Science and Biology resource in my shop: browse the collection.

Find a year-long curriculum designed for middle and high school classrooms.

Stay Connected
🛍️ Shop TpT or 🛍️ Memberships Site
✉️ Email Updates
📸 Instagram
📌 Pinterest
📘 Facebook
🎵 TikTok
📝 Blog
✉️ learnedlessonstpt@gmail.com

Teaching Made Easier.
Learning Made Meaningful.
Print • Digital • Google Classroom • No Prep

Life Science & Biology Guided Notes and PowerPoints: Keep Students Organized, Engaged, and Ready for Test Day

What’s Included

Units Covered

Why Guided Notes Work

10 Ways to Use These Guided Notes in Your Classroom

Ready to Simplify Your Life Science Planning?

Other Resources to Check Out

A tip from my classroom

Learned Lessons Teaching Materials

Let's be honest about notes in history class

Why guided notes actually work

What's inside the bundle

How I'd use it in a real classroom

What teachers are saying

Ready to take notes off your plate?

A tip from my classroom

Learned Lessons Teaching Materials

How I use it

What's inside

How I'd use this

Learned Lessons Teaching Materials

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