Everything you need to know about the Kelsey Chemistry Guided Notes Curriculum

I’m sure you’re on this page because you are considering making a purchase of my chemistry guided notes curriculum. First of all, thank you for your interest! I’m thrilled that you’d consider my work worthy of your classroom. It’s a privilege I don’t take lightly. With that being said, I hope this post helps to answer EVERY question you have about the curriculum. But if it doesn’t, feel free to email me with your questions.

How was it written?

When I was a new teacher, I was working in a really crazy school where kids were often out for field trips, middle of the day social clubs, or just straight up absent. Trying to get them on track and caught up was ALWAYS on my to do list. Plus we had a state final exam at the end of the year. The “baby notes” as I call them, started as a “cheat sheet” for the lessons I was teaching. A quick one-pager of what we did in class on a given day.

They evolved into guided notes for the students that were actually IN my classroom each day. I wanted my lessons to be short and sweet. This would give my students ample time for practice in class since I’ve never really been a fan of homework. (I’ve learned that students, or at least my students, learn better in my classroom than at home.) I believe not listening, but doing is learning, so in class practice time is very important to me and built into the curriculum.

Read more about why I’m never giving up guided notes here.

What is taught?

There are 15 units within the chemistry curriculum. They are:

Each unit has a different number of lessons, but they cover the basics of the given topic at a high school level.

How long does the curriculum run?

The curriculum is designed to last a full school year. There are 98 lessons inside the curriculum, each meant to be taught in a single day. You may find there are some lessons you want to skip. Or some days you want to teach two lessons. Or some lessons you want to add a second day in for additional practice. If you include 15 unit tests, 15 days of unit review and time for a midterm and final exam you’ve got somewhere around 130 days of school.

This curriculum integrates perfectly with my full year lab book, which adds in another 36-41 days of school. This pairing will certainly depend on your need for lab activities.

If you only teach chemistry for a single semester, buying just the units you need a la carte may be a better option for you.

What is the format of a single lesson?

Students Enter

You’ll start each class with a “Question of the Day.” This question is written on the first slide of the presentation. You put it on the board as students enter your classroom and you take attendance. I like to have my students chat with each other about this question.

During this time, students should also pick up a guided notes handout and either add them to their binder or glue them into their interactive notebooks. Yes, there are two formats of paper notes for your students.

You Teach

Then you, the teacher, spend 10-20 minutes teaching your lesson using the slides. They are available both as Google Slides or PowerPoint. There are three different formats for you to choose from: Whimsical, Classical and Dark Mode. (The kids LOVE Dark Mode.)

chemistry slides for full year curriculum

Students Practice

At the end of your lecture, students will complete “Show What You Know” questions directly on their notes page or on the next page of their interactive notebooks. These are self-assessment questions designed for students to eventually study from. After some time, you will give the answers to students so they can check their work. (I like to have volunteers put their answers on my whiteboard to share out and compare to the Slides.) To study, students will cover up the answers and redo the questions. There’s no need for you to rush to grade classwork for the purposes of studying.

self assessment — If you print the full page notes, these questions are on the notes sheet as pictured. If you print the half page notes, these comes as a separate “Q-Card” to be glued down on next page in notebook.

I choose to end class with some classwork, which sometimes becomes homework depending on the lesson. Those are the Quick Practice worksheets. For each lesson there is a worksheet that is around 10 questions on the topic. I often let students work with partners for this work, have them turn it in and grade it. This is just to get some grades in the book. They should be pretty well versed in the content after the SWYK questions, making this a good grade for them. But also allows for more in class practice time.

Supplementing

Depending on the lesson content, I like to supplement with other in class activities. These are things like Card Sorts, Pixel Art, Chemistry Mysteries or worksheets I’ve curated over the years. There are some lessons I just really like to supplement. For example, when students learn average atomic mass, I really love my report card activity to help them understand the differences between the two types of averages. While I enjoy doing this, supplementing daily practice is not necessary to get a full chemistry experience from this curriculum.

What is the format of a unit?

Each unit in the chemistry curriculum comes with two versions of a unit plan. One for the teacher and one for the students. The one for the teacher includes a unit summary, an essential question and some “big ideas” I call enduring understandings.

Then the lessons within the unit are organized in order of complexity and their recommended teaching order. Within the unit plan, I note the chemistry content students will learn in the lesson along with the skills they’ll learn. They are not aligned to any specific standards. This is because the science standards across the country are usually based on NGSS, but not necessarily. It will be very easy for you to find the specific standard within your own set to match up to the descriptor I’ve included.

The student version (below) is used as a study guide and homework assignment page. Students can use it to keep themselves organized.

What do the Unit Tests look like?

The unit tests are designed to be taken in about 45 minutes. They are usually 25-30 questions. Each test is roughly 75% multiple choice questions and 25% fill in questions. All questions on the test are to be weighted equally. Unit tests are aligned to the learning targets associated with each lesson. You can see that list of learning targets in my chemistry curriculum outline, available for free email delivery. The tests are editable so you can take out the questions you don’t love, add in your own or rearrange as needed. There are three versions of every unit test. The multiple choice answers are scrambled. Free response is not always adjusted between versions (because sometimes it becomes a new question entirely). But when those are easily rewritten without changing question content, they have been.

What about labs?

I’ve taught in a number of schools where the difference between the honors and grade level students was the lab component. Or where the school only offered the lecture portion of the class. Or the teacher interested in the chemistry curriculum has lab activities they enjoy and don’t need mine.

For these reasons and more the curriculum does not include any lab activities, but you can purchase the labs separately.

What can I expect of the vocabulary resources?

Within each unit, there is a bundle of vocabulary resources available. The specific terms were chosen from the standards I used to build the chemistry curriculum in the first place. For each vocabulary bundle there are a few resources:

A list of vocabulary terms which easily turns into a “write and define” homework assignment
- This pairs well with my free chemistry glossary
A set of flash cards with terms and definitions
- Print only the odd pages if you’d like students to write their own definitions
A crossword puzzle
A joke decipher puzzle
A set of matching term to definition dominoes which can be used over and over again
3 versions of a vocabulary matching quiz plus keys

What does the final exam pack look like?

There are 4 entirely different exams in the final exam pack. Each test has two versions. These tests are also completely editable so you can customize the test to exactly what you need. Each test is 75 questions: 50 multiple choice and 25 fill in questions. The exam is designed to be taken in about 2.5 hours if allowing 2 minutes per question (which is more than enough!) The questions are weighted equally.

You will also receive a reference sheet for students to use during the test. This is editable.

Each test has a companion page so you can easily navigate the test question topics. For example, on every test, question 51 is a fill in question pulled from the measurement unit. If you don’t like the question on Test A, you can pull the equivalent question from Test B. You can also use this if you choose to use the tests differently.

Because there are four different tests, I like to use one as the final exam, combine the two “top halves” to be the midterm and use the fourth as a diagnostic test or as study material for my students. Having them use that companion document can help them to know which units to study.

Extras Included

Documents

There are a few documents that can help you to execute your chemistry curriculum that are included in the full year bundle.

You’ll get a 180 day and 90 pacing calendar written on a calendar for the current year, including some “black out days” for holidays and other events like the day after Halloween.

You will also get a syllabus template, syllabus quiz (my favorite) and a summary curriculum map/scope and sequence that is great to give to administration for their needs.

Video Lessons

Over 2022 I taught each and every lesson from my office and put the recordings on YouTube. Teachers love to use these videos to load up their Google Classroom Library. But the best is when either a student or the teacher is absent. I’m happy to teach your students for you. The videos have also helped new chemistry teachers to feel more confident in some tricky lessons before getting in front of their own classrooms.

Solutions

New in 2024 are pdfs that include solutions to math problems. New chemistry teachers requested these. This is both for them to have a good hold on the content before getting in front of their students, but also to be able to show students the solutions to some of the tougher problems. If these are not yet included in a lesson you’ve purchased, rest assured it will be there shortly. If you need the solutions immediately, feel free to email me and I will move that page to the top of my to do list.

What about differentiation and my students with specific learning needs?

Honors vs. Grade Level

For the most part, I’ve never taught my honors and grade level students differently. Chemistry is tough, but it’s hard to amp it up or dilute it down without going too above and beyond or missing good content. For that reason, I choose to differentiate between these two groups in how I grade or how I allocate our class time. You can read an entire post on differentiation here.

Special Education and ENL

I truthfully have never cared about the way my students choose to take notes. Some students love to listen and never write down a thing. Others choose to write what they want from the slides. Those students usually hold out on their methods for 4-6 weeks. Then they agree that guided notes are the quickest and easiest way for them to understand the chemistry I teach them.

Most teachers, especially in high school use guided notes for Special Education and ENL students only. You can choose to keep this tradition if you like. I choose to open this “accommodation” to all students. Chemistry is hard enough. And the less time students spend writing, the more time they can spend listening. Then we have a lot more class time for practice. Because I truly believe that doing is learning this is a staple of how I manage my classroom.

To assist Special Education and ENL students outside of their individualized needs, I often will allow them to do fewer problems than their General Education counterparts. I choose the questions that will help them understand the chemistry and get a taste for the most variety in questioning. They are provided answers for the questions they are not assigned, meaning they can go back and work some more if they choose to.