AP Biology Learning and Study Guide for Unit 1: Chemistry of Life

Description

Updated for the most recent 2025 AP Biology Course and Exam Description! This resource is designed to help guide your AP Biology students to learn, study, and review all of the topics in Unit 1. No Prep, print and go!

Each Essential Standard is written out on the left side of the paper, with focused, open ended questions on the right side for students to work through.

Topics for AP Biology Unit 1:

1.1 Structure of Water and Hydrogen Bonding
1.2 Elements of Life
1.3 Introduction to Macromolecules
1.4 Carbohydrates
1.5 Lipids
1.6 Nucleic Acids
1.7 Proteins

Entire resource is editable. Worksheet questions are packed tightly to conserve paper! Or complete digitally!

Includes a comprehensive answer KEY!

Updated for the 2025 AP Biology CED

The College Board made a handful of changes to each Unit which I have highlighted in the editable Key so you can quickly find them. Check out this blog post, “What is Different about the new AP Biology 2025 CED?” It goes over all of the changes in detail!

Save hours of time!

**Bonus** Save hours of time searching for resources to teach with! Purchase includes a curated list of resources. Arranged and organized for each unit topic. These are resources I use myself, so if you have questions about any of them, just ask! The list includes online interactive activities, video clips, and Lab ideas and classroom activities for your students. Since the internet is constantly changing, some links go dead every year. I spend part of my summer weeding through the links, deleting and replacing any dead ones as I can. I then send out an update for everyone to have the new links.

My AP Biology students benefit tremendously from having quick access to the Essential Knowledge standards and these guiding questions. After going through each set, they feel confident they are ready for the Test!

How to use this resource:

While going through a Unit as a working document, students can add to it as they learn
Just before a Unit test as a study guide
At the end of the semester to prepare for the AP Biology Exam

It is helpful to have students begin by going through the Essential Knowledge itself, highlighting key vocabulary. This gives them a good foundation to grow from, they know what to look for and what is important as they learn about, or review for the Unit.

When my students use these as review, I put them into small groups of three or four. They work together to complete the questions. Then students get into new groups and review their answers. I help guide them and help with questions that they can not come to an agreement on.

Looking for more AP Biology Curriculum resources? All eight units are available!

Or BUNDLE and save! Get all eight units, 140+ pages of review and study guides, with 200+ total Teaching and Activity resources organized by unit and Learning Objective!

Click here to see a preview of the AP Biology Unit 1 Review.

See what other happy teachers are saying about the AP Biology Unit 1 Review on Teachers Pay Teachers:

Loved it, it was easy to use no prep! Perfect for my class. – Mr E.

This is a great resource for the students to see and understand what is expected of them for each unit. Goes along perfectly with College Board sequence. Thank you for the work you put into this! – Jennifer M.

These notes provided an excellent additional resource to help walk the student through the concepts and had ample practice for me to assess comprehension! – Meghan B.

I love this resource! It has saved me so much time and being in google doc format makes life so much easier. Our district has been doing a variety of virtual and hybrid instruction this year. I ran copies of this, made physical notebooks for my students, and we use it as review at the end of each unit. This has saved me so much time and I highly recommend. My students have also commented on how much they like having comprehensive review materials! Great resource, thank you so much! – Victoria B.

This resource is a great tool for reviewing the College Board expectations. I used it as a part of an end-of-semester study guide. – Rachael W.

Excellent comprehensive review. Students appreciate how organized it is and how they can clearly see how the content relates to the standards. – Alisha W.