Enhance Your Students’ Note-Taking Skills

As former upper elementary and middle school teachers, many Teach Starter team members can attest to the fact that many of the students entering upper grades struggle greatly with the concept of note-taking. They’re unsure of what they should write down, their handwriting and organization are off, or they’re just not motivated to take notes without a goal in mind. We’ve put together a way for you to help bridge the gap between elementary and middle school with a World War II Doodle Notes template.

For maximum effectiveness, pair this resource with our World War 2 Slide presentation to build your WW2 unit plans.

Printable Activities for Teaching World War II Concepts

This causes of WW2 worksheet provides students with an organized and graphically pleasing way to take notes on World War 2.  This note-taking template provides the learner with space to note the following concepts

• Who was involved in World War II?
• What were the key events that led to WWII?
• Why did Britain and France declare war on Germany? 
• Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
• How did America respond to the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Tips for Differentiation + Scaffolding Your World War 2 Plans 

In addition to independent student work time, use this worksheet as an activity for:

• Cross-Curricular reading groups 
• Lesson warm-up
• Lesson wrap-up
• Fast finishers 
• Homework assignment
• Whole-class review (via smartboard)

To challenge your accelerated students:

• provide your students with a completed note sheet, and have them use the content to create a WWII anchor chart or poster for the classroom.
• provide your students with trade books and other informational WW2 reading materials to use in the classroom.

To help your struggling readers:

• complete the activity in a small group or 1:1 learning session.
• provide your students with differentiated reading materials to reference while completing their notes project.
• provide students with an anchor chart, poster, or other WW2 worksheets and WWII reading passages to reference during the activity.

Easily Download & Print

Use the dropdown icon on the Download button to choose between the PDF or Google Slides version of this resource. 

Additionally, project the template onto a screen and work through it as a class by having students record their answers in their notebooks.

Grab more resources to teach World War 2 to kids!

This resource was created by Ali Endlich, a teacher in South Carolina and a Teach Starter collaborator.