In my last post I offered up a few suggestions for teaching science vocabulary. In this blog I will give more examples of strategies that I have found useful for teaching and reviewing science vocabulary in the upper grades.

CLOZE

A cloze is a form of a fill in the blank exercise. Words may be deleted from the text in question either  randomly or selectively, depending on exactly what aspect it is intended to review (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Example of a cloze acitvity

I like this approach because it can be quickly differentiated for all levels of learners. Lower level students can be given a word bank along with the cloze, while my highly able students can be given just the word bank and be challenged to write a paragraph that uses all the words and demonstrates understanding of the concept. I usually have a few students who try a shortcut of “these words are all found in our science textbook” and then listing all the words. However I remind them this activity is to demonstrate their knowledge and that that shortcut response demonstrates they understand very little and will not earn top marks.

PICTIONARY

Playing Pictionary with science terms can be a fun way to review vocabulary and you can play the game as a class using the interactive whiteboard.  This can also be an individual assignment where students create sketches that represent science vocabulary for anchor charts or their notes.  I like sharing the individual sketches as a class because we often get good discussions and insights into how to represent complex concepts in a simple sketch (see figure 2).  Also I think it is good for my students to have the opportunity to use science vocabulary so as a student explains the current sketch they will need to use other vocabulary words such as circuit and electron.

Figure 2: Examples of Pictionary style responses for science vocabulary

ROOTS, SUFFIXES and PREFIXES

In the upper grades I try to teach my students to see the patterns in vocabulary words and to use prior knowledge to decode new science terms. I often model how to break down roots, prefixes and suffixes as part of my teaching of new vocabulary words. I found this TeacherTube video, Prefixes, Suffixes and Roots Rap, a few months ago and I used it as part of an introductory set for class.

I don’t usually do a standalone lesson on roots and prefixes, however, there are many lessons on Promethean Planet that can be used as nice mini lessons with your class or for personal review.

Usually I try to model meta-cognitively how to decode the words and make connections to other vocabulary words as I teach. For example in the genetics unit I stressed the prefixes of homo- and hetero- when talking about homozygous and heterozygous relating them to homosexual which I discovered my 8th grade students had heard and used by didn’t know WHY the term was used. I found it pretty humorous as the light bulbs went on in my students heads as they worked out that if “homo-“ means same then homosexual means…. with the choruses of “OH” that followed. I noticed a few days later that a number of my students were able to transfer that knowledge to figuring out what homologous chromosome meant.

In our current unit when I introduced the word electroscope I challenged my students to think of other words with “-scope” in them. After looking at our brainstormed list my students decided that “-scope” had something to do with seeing or detecting and decided that an electroscope lets us detect the presence of electrons.

I also have created and modified activities where I can challenge my students to figure out the meaning of roots and prefixes own their own. For example, in chemistry I have my students “discover” naming patterns by giving them cards that have the name, , smell and molecular formula of various compounds. I ask my students to sort the cards into groups with shared characteristics and they usually notice that compounds with similar properties have similar parts to their names such as that all the cards with a minty smell have the suffix “-one” in the name (see figure 3). Letting my students discover these patterns on their own helps them make connections and challenges them to use high level thinking skills. (The card sort I use for Chemistry was adapted from the Smells Unit published by Key Curriculum Press).

Figure 3: Sample cards for chemistry vocabulary sort

Over To You

I’m curious to know about other resources for teaching science vocabulary. What are some strategies you use with your students? What are some of the vocabulary challenges you find? How do you differentiate vocabulary for your students?

This article is from Planet's educator-penned blogging series: the Planet Teachers' Lounge.

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