Hey science teacher…
Stop searching for templates. Start designing them.
A summer series of live, 90-minute workshops where you’ll watch experienced teachers design notebook templates that guide student thinking — and build your own, right alongside them. Join a single session, your grade level’s set, or the full series.
The foundation to transform your notebooks—and your classroom
It’s Sunday afternoon. You’re planning next week, and you’re staring at a blank slide, a blank notebook page, a half-finished activity — trying to figure out how to organize the learning so students actually think instead of just filling in boxes.
You’ve got a folder full of resources. Graphic organizers. Foldables. CER frameworks. Doodle notes. Guided notes. Pages you’ve downloaded, saved, and adapted.
And still, every time you sit down to plan, it feels like you’re starting from scratch.
You’ve seen the notebook pages that work.
The ones where students organize their ideas, make connections, and explain their thinking. You’ve saved the screenshots. You’ve thought, “I wish I knew how to make pages like that.”
The problem was never that you don’t have enough templates. The problem is that no one ever taught you how to design one.
Great notebook pages aren’t about creativity. They’re about intentional design.
Here’s what most teachers don’t realize: the pages that spark real thinking aren’t the work of someone who’s “just more artistic.” They’re the result of intentional instructional decisions — about structure, layout, prompts, and the kind of thinking each page is built to support.
That’s also why doodle notes alone don’t get you there. Color and visuals can make a page look engaging, but if the page wasn’t designed with purpose, students can label and decorate without ever making sense of the science.
The drawings aren’t what make the learning powerful. The structure is.
Once you can see the decisions behind a well-designed template, you stop hunting for the perfect page, and start building your own.
INTRODUCING
Teaching with Templates is a summer series of six live, 90-minute workshops — three for middle school, three for high school. In each one, you’ll watch experienced teachers design notebook templates in real time, then build your own with guidance and feedback.
So whether you join one session or the whole series, you’re not just collecting templates for one topic.
Instead, you’re seeing the skill modeled enough ways that you can design templates for anything you teach.
You’ll see real student work first, so you know what’s possible. Then you’ll learn the features that make a template actually work (not just look nice), and design your own in real time.
Because with notebooks, you could have…
Before this, you’re…
Staring at blank pages, wondering how to organize learning that actually promotes thinking
Spending hours searching for and piecing together templates
Assuming other teachers are just more creative or naturally gifted at design
Asking, “Does anyone have a template for this lesson?”
After this, you’re…
Designing templates with purpose, using the same decisions expert teachers make
Turning a phenomenon, investigation, reading, model, CER, or discussion into a page that guides thinking
Confident that you can create the right structure — instead of hunting for it
Asking, “What kind of template would best support the thinking I want students to do?”
The result is notebook pages that are more purposeful, lessons that are more coherent, and students who are doing deeper thinking — because the structure was designed to support it.
what teachers are saying
“I’ve been using notebooks for years, but this helped me understand WHY certain pages work better than others.”
“I always thought you were just really creative. I didn’t realize there was so much intentional thinking behind the design of your notebook pages.”
“This is the first time I’ve felt confident creating my own notebook pages instead of searching for someone else’s.”
“I finally understand how to create pages that help students organize their thinking without doing the thinking for them.”
“I came for the templates, but what I really learned was how to think about lesson design differently.”
If you’re new to this work — bring a lesson you’re ready to transform. No prior training required. This is also a first taste of the thinking behind the full Phenomenal Science Notebooks training.
If you’re already inside Phenomenal Science Notebooks — this is a deep dive into the templating module: a chance to create alongside expert teachers, get hands-on feedback, and walk away with polished, ready-to-use templates.
Whatever you teach — middle school or high school — there’s a track for you. Each level’s sessions work through templating in your subjects and curricula, so the examples land where you actually teach.
Either way, you’ll leave designing pages with intention instead of starting from a blank one.
Every session is live on Zoom and runs 90 minutes. Can’t make one live? You’ll get the recording. All times Pacific.
Middle School
Three unique lessons, taught by different teachers with different curricula
June 25 @ 5:00 pm PDT
July 18 @ 10:00 am PDT
Aug 8 @ 10:00 am PDT
High School
Biology
July 7 @ 5:00 pm PDT
Ag Science
July 20 @ 5:00 pm PDT
Chemistry
Aug 7 @ 5:00 pm PDT
Choose how you join
Join a single session, your grade level’s set of three, or the full series. The more you join, the more ways you see templating modeled — and the more the skill sticks.
Single Workshop
$97
Join any one 90-minute session
✔️One live session in your subject and level
✔️ Build a template with real-time feedback
✔️ The recording in your Circle account
3-Session Bundle
$237
(Middle School or High School) Your level’s three sessions — three subjects, six teachers, templating modeled three different ways.
✔️All three sessions for your grade level
✔️Six experienced teachers across three subjects and curricula
✔️A skill that transfers to whatever you’re assigned to teach next
✔️Recordings of all three in your Circle account
The Full Series
$397
Features all six sessions, both levels. Twelve teachers, six subjects, templating modeled twelve different ways.
✔️Every session, middle school and high school
✔️Twelve experienced teachers across six subjects and curricula
✔️The most practice and the widest range of examples
✔️Recordings of all six in your Circle account
✔️If you want to fully build the skill of templating — and have templates ready for nearly anything — this is the one.
Teaching with Templates is one piece of the bigger picture.
Templating is one of the ten modules inside the full Phenomenal Science Notebooks training, and this workshop goes deep on that one skill.
It’s not a replacement for the full notebooking system, and it isn’t meant to be. Think of it as a focused, hands-on look at how the pages get designed — the thinking that becomes the foundation for an entire notebooking course.
If you love what templating can do here, the full Phenomenal Science Notebooks training is where this approach becomes the backbone of your whole curriculum: sense-making, sketchnotes, anchor phenomena, big ideas, summative tasks, and more.
But you don’t need any of that to join today. Bring one lesson. Learn the skill. See what’s possible. Explore Phenomenal Science Notebooks →
teachers who made the shift…
Kari came in with plenty of ideas but struggled to turn them into pages that supported student thinking. She’d been searching for resources and adapting other people’s work. Once she learned how templates are designed, she started building her own structures — pages that matched her instructional goals instead of someone else’s.
Michelle had students completing notebook activities, but she wanted deeper thinking. She realized the issue wasn’t effort — it was structure. By learning to design templates intentionally, she shifted from creating activities to designing learning experiences that helped students connect and communicate ideas.
David considered himself a science teacher, not a designer. He assumed the best pages came from naturally creative people. After watching expert teachers build templates and practicing with his own lessons, he found that effective templates aren’t about talent — they’re about intentional decisions. He left with a process he could use again and again.
Hi, I’m Jennifer!
I’m not teaching templates because I studied graphic design.
I’m teaching them because I spent years solving the problem every science teacher faces: how do you turn a great learning experience into a notebook page that actually helps students think?
As a science educator, instructional coach, and the creator of Phenomenal Science Notebooks, I’ve worked with thousands of teachers and spent years designing pages, learning experiences, and structures that support sense-making.
Over time, I realized the pages that worked weren’t successful because they were creative or pretty. They worked because they were intentionally designed to guide thinking.
That realization became the foundation of everything I do.
In this workshop, I’m not just sharing finished pages — I’m opening up the design process so you can see how they’re built, hear the decisions behind each one, and practice the thinking on your own lessons.
Because students learn best when notebooks become a tool for thinking — not just a place to store information.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
You have questions, I have answers!
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No. You'll see plenty of examples and leave with templates you created during the workshop — but the goal is to learn the skill of templating. You'll learn how expert teachers make decisions about structure, layout, prompts, and student thinking, so you can design templates for your own lessons.
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Yes. The workshop focuses on the design process, not a specific curriculum. Whether you teach Earth science, life science, physical science, chemistry, physics, or integrated science, you'll learn principles you can apply to your own content right away.
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Not at all. This isn't about making pretty pages — it's about creating structures that support student thinking. Effective templates come from intentional instructional decisions, not artistic talent.
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Perfect. This workshop builds on those strategies by helping you understand the thinking behind the design. Instead of relying on templates someone else made, you'll learn to create your own with purpose.
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No. Join a single session, your grade level's three, or the full series. The bundles just give you more practice, more subjects, and the best value — but a single session stands on its own. It’s not a substitute for Phenomenal Science Notebook, but a wonderful addition to our full training.
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Yes. This isn't a sit-and-get session. You'll watch expert teachers design templates in real time, then apply what you're learning to your own lessons — and leave with work you created.
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The workshop is recorded and posted to your Circle account, so you'll have access to the recording afterward.
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Phenomenal Science Notebooks is the full notebooking system and philosophy across ten modules. Teaching with Templates goes deep on one of them — the skill of designing templates. It's a focused look at how expert teachers create the pages, not a replacement for the full training.
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Templates you created during the sessions, examples from expert teachers, feedback on your own work, a process for designing future templates, and the confidence to approach a blank notebook page with intention instead of uncertainty.
Stop searching for templates. Start designing them.
The next time you sit down to plan, you won’t wonder where to start. You’ll know how to build a page that helps students think. Join us live, build your template, and walk away with a skill you’ll use every time you design a lesson.
After you join, you’ll get an email to set up your Circle account and join the workshop. See you there!
Single Workshop
$97
Join any one 90-minute session
✔️One live session in your subject and level
✔️ Build a template with real-time feedback
✔️ The recording in your Circle account
3-Session Bundle
$237
(Middle School or High School) Your level’s three sessions — three subjects, six teachers, templating modeled three different ways.
✔️All three sessions for your grade level
✔️Six experienced teachers across three subjects and curricula
✔️A skill that transfers to whatever you’re assigned to teach next
✔️Recordings of all three in your Circle account
The Full Series
$397
Features all six sessions, both levels. Twelve teachers, six subjects, templating modeled twelve different ways.
✔️Every session, middle school and high school
✔️Twelve experienced teachers across six subjects and curricula
✔️The most practice and the widest range of examples
✔️Recordings of all six in your Circle account
✔️If you want to fully build the skill of templating — and have templates ready for nearly anything — this is the one.