Develop Note-Taking Skills with Doodle Notes

As former upper elementary and middle school teachers, many Teach Starter team members can attest to the fact that a lot of the students entering upper grades struggle with taking notes and using them to study. 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 / The Holocaust Doodle Notes template.

Pair this resource with our Holocaust Slide presentation to build your WW2 unit plans for maximum effectiveness.

Printable Activities for Teaching About the Holocaust

This Holocaust worksheet gives students an organized way to take notes on the main events and ideas surrounding the topic.  This note-taking template offers the learner with space to note the following concepts

• Who was involved in the Holocaust?
• What were the key events that led up to the Holocaust?
• Why did Germany target the Jewish people at the time?
• How did the Nazis convince others that the Holocaust answered Germany’s problems?

Tips for Differentiation + Scaffolding Your Holocaust Lessons

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 quiz questions or trivia games to review the content.
• 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 Holocaust 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 elements of World War 2 to kids!

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