Cheap and Easy Study Guides

  My Biology Co-op class creates and uses loads of study guides.  Biology is rife with vocabulary.  Let me share a few ideas we use.  Here and here are traditional study guides, questions, key concepts, and vocabulary terms.  Another tool is concept maps.  Often I put key terms on to index cards and have the kids create a map.

You can make free concepts maps with IHMC software, Google Docs, and Google’s Jamboard.  

My kids often make graphics.  Basically, the kids may use any image, sketch, notes, concept map they desire.  Anything on the poster or graphic may be used during the test.  The teens research and study as they make their guides.  It’s been an effective tool to help kids achieve a deeper quality of understanding.

For these graphics, the kids do not earn a grade until I decide they have sufficient details, images, and notes to be successful on the test.  Often, I’ll ask kids to add a concept map with titles or draw the stages of mitosis.  I might ask a student to explain verbally their image and its significance.  BTW this method is slow.  Kids resist revisions or annotations.  By ‘resist’ I mean there is great wailing and gnashing of teeth.  But once a kid can show me they understand DNA transcription and translation, the subsequent test is usually a breeze.  (I insist they revise essay tests, too.  You can imagine how popular that is.)  

Many home-school families use lapbooks  or Cornell Notes as study tools.  The point is to try different study guides to see which tool works for your child.  Start with concept maps; most kids find them useful.