Scientific Vocabulary – Why I explicitly teach it

When I first started my career as a Physics teacher, I was convinced that the way pupils got good grades in their Physics exams was by being good at maths. Physics is basically applied maths, right? Then I realised that actually only about 35% of a typical GCSE Physics exam paper is on equations and maths. That means there is 65% of an exam that relies on the pupils being able to communicate scientific ideas and theories correctly using the correct scientific vocabulary. 

By not helping my pupils to access the scientific vocabulary and by focusing so heavily on the maths I was doing my pupils a disservice.  

 

I realised that I needed to start to support my pupils in understanding and using scientific vocabulary but had no idea where to begin! No-one in my department really focused on teaching of vocabulary explicitly and with a purpose. A key word was just defined to the class and then quickly moved on from so that we could focus on the maths. 

I found this very hard. I then attended the ResearchEd Kent Conference in November of 2019 and attended a talk by Amanda Fleck on Literacy in Science. (Amanda is an avid tweeter and can be found by @AJTF71). Amanda spoke about the tiers of language which I had never heard of before and strategies in which we can help our pupils learn to talk about science. From then I was hooked. I went to work on the Monday and started to develop ways to include it into my teaching. 

 

I explicitly teach scientific vocabulary to my pupils. This includes breaking down the word into the prefix root and suffix modelling to the pupils exactly how these come together to form the word. Since doing this my pupils use of scientific vocabulary has increased dramatically in their written and spoken answers and they are using it correctly!

An added benefit I have noticed is that my pupils seem to be able to understand unseen scientific words a lot easier now. They are able to split the word up into its constituent parts and then use that to help form a meaning. 

 

A few strategies I have used are:

·       Breaking the word down into prefix root and suffix and explicitly teaching the meaning of each part.

·       Use of keyword glossaries which are given out at the start of the topic. 

·       Retrieval of keywords regularly.

·       Spelling tests.

·       Definition dominoes

·       Crosswords

 

My favourite activity to do that improves scientific vocabulary is to give the pupils 5 (or more) scientific words that they have never seen before. They then have to break the word up into its constituent parts and then write a formal definition for the word. These words tend to be words found in A Level or degree depending on year group. I have found that not only do pupils find this fun it has also significantly improved their vocabulary and exam performance. 

 

Scientific literacy is one of my passions. Since I attended Amanda’s talk I have made it one of my priorities to develop the scientific literacy of every pupil that I teach. Scientific literacy is a key skill for our pupils and we need to support it. 

You may see on my blog that I have written about this topic before – specifically discussing how I promote the reading of scientific articles  in my lessons. I have plans for more blogs in the future about promoting scientific literacy so please keep an eye out for them! Thanks for reading and I hope you have found it useful.