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Real Science Teaching. Real Classroom Experience.

I’m Amy Brown, a veteran high school biology and chemistry teacher, wife, and mom who understands the daily reality of lesson planning, grading, meetings, and everything in between. I know what it feels like to have too much to do and not enough time to do it.

After decades in the classroom, I’ve created rigorous, classroom-tested biology and chemistry resources that save you planning time while still delivering strong, meaningful science instruction. Every lab, activity, and lesson is designed to move students beyond memorization and into real scientific thinking.

If you want your students excited about science and thinking deeply without spending your entire weekend planning, you’re in the right place.

Amy Brown Biology and Chemistry Teacher

“I just love getting kids hooked on science.”

Teaching Fungi? Interactive Notebook Pages and Warm Ups Will Help!

What have I learned about interactive notebooks, warm ups and bell ringers during my first year of using them?




  • Time management is so important!  If you are not careful, this can consume way too much of your class time.
  • Utilize to the best of your ability, the first 5-10 minutes of your class.  Don't get bogged down in classroom chores.  Get your students right to work every single day.  A short warm up or bell ringer each day will get students working, while you are taking care of "stuff."
  • Reviewing a small amount of information each day has increased retention of information for my students.
  • The best comment ever from a student?  "These have really helped me remember the information for the test."
I began this journey at the beginning of this school year, and I can honestly say that I wish I had started this years ago.  Each year our class time seems to get shorter, and we have more information we are required to cover.  It seems to me that each year brings more and more interruptions to my class time.  

My goal at the beginning of the school year?  I wanted to find a way to better utilize each valuable minute of instruction time.  These activities (interactive notebooks and bell ringers) have accomplished that for me.  And added bonuses include:  (1) My students actually seem to enjoy them!  (2) The pages make great homework assignments.  (3) I can leave them in my sub folder for emergencies.  (4) The completed warm up notebook provides a perfect way to review for my semester exam.


Note:  This is just the latest in a long line of blog posts on this topic.  Use the search bar at the top of my blog to search for the other posts about interactive notebooks.



OK, so I need to get the topic of this particular blog post.  I have just finished using this technique to cover my unit on the Fungi.

I developed a set of 16 bell ringer pages to use with my unit.  Some of the pages were used at the beginning of my class as bell ringers, while other pages were used for homework assignments.  But all pages went into the warm up notebook that I require each student to keep.  Here are the highlights:





I have uploaded this set of interactive notebook pages on the fungi into my TpT Store.  



All of my interactive notebook sets can be view by clicking this image.


What's next? We are studying the protists now in my class.  I am am building a set of bell ringers to cover the algae and the protozoans.


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