Every had one of those comments made to you and it has just opened a whole can of worms? Well it happened to me when one of my students informed me that science was like a second language.
After his initial comment I thought to explore his thinking (here was my mistake and my key to levelling up as a teacher), I asked him why he felt that and he explained that in science we never say any thing simply. Something does not "move" it "translocates", it does not simply "burn" it "combusts". He pointed to the sentence I had on the board and explained even tho I had defined them earlier, five out of the eleven words of my sentence were still new and incomprehensible to him.
This then made me realise how in science I and possibly others needed to spend more time on the language of science in order for the students to access it. I then decided to tackle the literacy of science as a foreign language. This being the case I bounded up to MFL to see how they approached new words with students as they are delivering them every lesson as well as their use and application.
The main points I came away with were...
-You can not over learn keywords enough.
-Students working out the meanings where ever possible by logic, deduction, pictures or research will stick in their mind a lot better than simply being told.
-I was shown a matching program that automatically makes games from your keywords and definitions (I will try to add this to blog later)
-Speed word games
Many of the things were obvious however after providing students in year 7 with the keywords and doing games and over learning activities I noticed their use of correct scientific language had grown.
I intend to look in to more methods including making some translations cheat sheets where low ability students will write a sentence and then try to decode it using a dictionary /thesaurus or iPad first breaking down the words so they understand them, possibly writing definitions of harder words, then writing the sentence in their own words.
My long term goal is to have a file of 'cheat sheets' that assist the student in doing different key skills, but the student can try different methods that suit them.
