Simplifying the Vocabulary of Science in the Middle School Classroom
Early on in my teaching career I would get caught up in the intricate details and vocabulary involved with science. Let’s be honest, middle school science is like a 2nd language to everyone with all of its Latin-based terms and high-level vocabulary. In many cases, this attention to words is warranted, particularly when it comes to words that relay procedure, but in some cases I would argue that the vocabulary can be left out. Here’s why…
Teach to think like a scientist…
There was a paradigm shift that occurred when we moved from the previous science standards to today’s Next Generation Science Standards. As I’ve talked about before, we’ve moved away from the facts and memorization of all of humanities greatest science discoveries and moved towards teaching the skillset required to think like a scientist; the ability to think critically and discuss collaboratively. A part of this shift means letting go of the long lists of vocabulary and definitions to memorize. I know it might seem as though I am arguing to get rid of something crucial to our studies, certainly, some vocabulary knowledge is needed, but should vocabulary be more important than understanding how something works or why something happens? Should it be more important than the scientific process of figuring out phenomena?
Let me use my middle school mitosis lesson as an example. When I first started teaching, I was incredibly concerned that students not only know the names of each stage of mitosis, they also knew what happened at each stage with specifics (I mean, honestly, was it so important that my middle schoolers knew what centrioles and spindle fibers were??). We would get so caught up in the vocabulary that the actual purpose of mitosis, the reason why its so important, would get lost in a jumble of complicated words. All my middle school students really needed to know was that one cell becomes two cells that are exactly the same. That’s it! That’s all there is… mitosis in its most basic, most fundamental way.
Too much of a good thing…
The epiphany that perhaps I was giving my 13-year-old kiddos just a little too much “science” came from my principal. After observing my mitosis lesson, she asked one simple question that ultimately changed much of how I approached middle school science. She asked, “how important is it that they know all those words?” Of course, there are some vocabulary they simply need, and we have to spend time on, but I no longer believe it should take the lead on the lesson. In fact, one of the principles behind the NGSS is that students make sense of their own understanding of the science and communicate it in ways that they understand. This suggests that students need a multitude of hands-on experiences with the science so that they can truly understand, in-depth, what is happening. Obviously, students can’t conduct some experiment that “causes” mitosis, but there are ways in which students can observe, model and predict the outcome of the process without getting lost in the vocabulary. Getting lost in the vocabulary is exactly what I saw happening to my students, so I moved away from the vocabulary-dense lessons of my past and spent more time on offering different activities that all drove home the same objective – what is the purpose of mitosis.
Remember, they’ll see it again…
I won’t lie, at first it worried me that I was presenting mitosis without all the stages. I had to go back and check and recheck the standard (which, incidentally, states only that students understand the difference between asexual and sexual reproduction and its role in genetic diversity). I had to remind myself that the objective was for students to understand the purpose of mitosis (and later meiosis). And I had to remind myself that they would see this again in high school biology, when the focus, the standards, and the objectives would make it more appropriate for them to focus on all those intricate details. In middle school, we are laying the foundation of science. We are building the wonder and excitement and curiosity that leads to creative thinking, problem solving, and thinking like a scientist.
Check out my activity-based mitosis lesson here!
