Each chapter in my science textbook is loaded with new vocabulary. How can I help students to deal with this specialized vocabulary?
—Dan, Ramapo, New Jersey
This task can be overwhelming. High school texts may have more than 3,000 specialized terms! We want our students to understand and use this vocabulary to communicate their comprehension of science concepts, but the sheer number of words plus the lack of background knowledge in younger or less experienced students makes it a challenge. Vocabulary is also a key component of reading comprehension.
Traditionally, students were required to copy definitions of words. They may have been challenged to put the definitions “in their own words.” Their vocabulary knowledge was assessed by objective tests. The students’ superficial knowledge of the words was soon replaced by blank stares when they encountered the words again.
We may think all terms are important, but based on the work of researchers such as Marzano and Pickering (in their book Building Academic Vocabulary), I’d suggest for each unit, you distill the list in the textbook to words that are critical: those important to understanding the unit’s essential concepts, those applicable to other units, and those specifically mentioned in your state’s standards. You could have a supplemental list of “nice to know” words and words students should already know. For example, in a unit on plants at the upper elementary level, photosynthesis may be an essential term. At the secondary level, it could be on the review list. Ideally and for consistency, these lists would be agreed upon by all teachers of a given subject or grade level. Students should be able to see these words on a designated wall in the classroom or a page in their notebooks. In addition to formal “definitions,” ask students to create a graphic representation of the word. To explain jet propulsion, for instance, one of my students drew a picture of a squid taking in water through a siphon and squirting it back out. I think he got it!
Graphic organizers can also be an effective way for students to become familiar with words. For descriptions, see the Graphic Organizers and Frayer Model websites.
We often assume students know how to use context clues in the text to figure out a word’s meaning, but many may need some assistance. I often showed students how knowing some common affixes and root/base words can help in figuring out what a word means. When my students first encountered the word “unicellular,” I pointed out that “uni-” means “one,” and we brainstormed other words that started with “uni” and were related to “one.” (The website Prefixes and Suffixes can help you identify some relevant ones to share).
I found students need to hear and say the words, not only read and write them. I had students repeat the words several times aloud, emphasizing the syllables by tapping them out.
Many students enjoy word games, which can help them explore and review vocabulary. Creating metaphors and analogies and playing games based on Jeopardy, Password, or Pictionary are enjoyable ways to explore and review words. (This Vocabulary website has ideas for word games and strategies.) However, I would question the value of word searches or word scrambles in helping students use words or understand their meaning.
Rather than relying on an objective test, you can assess students’ knowledge and use of vocabulary in other interesting ways. One of my favorites is a “word splash.” Using a prepared word list or one the students generate, have them write sentences including two or more of the words they’re exploring. In “word sorts,” give groups of students lists of words to categorize. The discussions they have are interesting and informative.

Some of you may remember the pre-Internet days when if you didn’t subscribe to a mailed publication, you had to trek to a public or university library to catch up on your reading on science topics. I must confess that for me back then, it was difficult to find the time to spend a few hours in the library (plus travel time) to find the publications and to read them right there and then.
But now, it’s easy to bring selected resources right to your computer. Many organizations, institutions, and agencies have elecronic resources that they share, free of charge, just for signing up. The subscriptions give you options for the format (newsletters delivered via e-mail, notices that are linked to a website with the information, RSS feeds, and/or podcasts). Check the sites of your favorite museum, university or college science departments, or scientific agencies to see if they offer newsletters or RSS feeds.
Here are some e-mail based newsletters that I subscribe to and that you may want to take a look at:

• Edutopia News and Technology in Education are both from the George Lucas Educational Foundation’s Edutopia website. This is one of my favorites for seeing teachers and students in action. Click on the E-newsletters or RSS links at the top of the page to get started.
• If you’re a member, of NSTA, you already get the newsletters. If you’re not, you can still sign up for them. There is also a link for you to check the e-mail address that is on file for you. This is also where you sign up for the NSTA listserves.
• I also like SmartBrief from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development ASCD). It has educational news on a variety of topics from newspapers and professional publications. You don’t have to be a member to subscribe to this service!
• Get updates from the National Science Foundation via e-mail and/podcsts or RSS feeds. You can select specific topics (e.g., Biology, Geosciences, Education) and you can indicate how often you want the updates (immediately, daily, weekly, monthly – I selected daily so that my inbox is not cluttered up). The link to sign up is right on their home page.
• Depending on your interest level, in-depth report, daily summaries, weekly summaries, and category-specific reports are among the options from Scientific American.
• Sign up for Breaking News from NASA. There are options for immediate, daily, weekly or weekly updates plus options to get podcasts, images, and other agency newsletters.

How do you handle this information? If you don’t want to clog up your school e-mail account or the one you share with others at home, you can set up a yahoo, hotmail, or gmail account (for free) just for these these messages. All of your reading materials will be in one place! However, some schools do not let teachers check e-mails other than the school one, so you may need to check if you can access these other mail sites at school. If you do sign up for a resource, be sure to read the fine print, especially if it is from a commercial entity. On some, you must opt out of receiving other materials or of having your email “shared” with others.
Do I read everything in these newsletters? No, I’ve leared to be a gourmet rather than a glutton! I scroll down and look at those whose title or summary sounds interesting or relevant. And sometimes I look at articles on topics I know little about, just to sample a new topic to learn more.

Science Notebooks can be useful tools, even with young students who are just learning to read and write. See how kindergarten teacher Kathryn Kaatz incorporated science writing and drawing as she took her students on “A Walk in the ‘Tall, Tall Grass'” after being inspired by Denise Fleming’s book entitled, In the Tall, Tall Grass (1991).
In his book Using Science Notebooks in Elementary Classrooms, author Michael P. Klentschy offers gives useful suggestions for sentence starters and writing prompts that can be used with young children.
What are your best ideas for incorporating science writing and drawing with your young observers?

August is here, and that can only mean one thing: The new school year is right around the corner!
Teacher Vision offers some tips for starting off the school year, such as organizing portfolios for students and designing bulletin boards. There is also a list of science tips, including:

• Have a Science Table in the classroom, and keep changing the theme: rocks; seashells; insects; birds; magnets; inventions; and so on.
• Put a prism on a countertop on a sunny day to catch the children’s attention and to launch a unit on color, sunlight, or refraction.

This is an especially nice suggestion:

• Memorization is not the key at this level. Exploration and discovery are important. Explain that real scientists work in this way, too.

Check out the list and add your suggestions here. How are you preparing your classroom? What is the first science you want to teach your students when the year begins?

As the new school year is getting underway, are you looking for some experiences to get students focused on scientific thinking and research skills? How can we show students what scientists actually “do” and how they communicate?
In one of the NSTA’s listservs , the site Natural Inquirer was mentioned and recommended, so I took a look. This is described as a “middle school science education journal” for students and teachers and is published by the USDA Forest Service. The articles are written by scientists who conduct various types of research. These aren’t just summaries or digests – the articles describe the methodology and discuss the results, just like an article in a professional science journal. The difference is that these are written in student-friendly language and include resources for the classroom.
In each issue, the articles can be downloaded as PDF files. Many are also available in Spanish. Each article introduces the scientists and has a glossary, graphs, diagrams, charts, and photographs. What I really like, though, were the reflection questions throughout the article to get students to stop and think as they read. Many articles also have a “factivity” that extends the concept to the classroom as a hands-on investigation or a vocabulary review.
Some of the issues have several articles relating to a theme; others are monographs with one article. You can browse the contents of each issue, but I found the search feature helpful. The “Education Resources” link has ideas for lesson plans, downloadable podcasts, and slide shows. And, best of all, the downloads and other resources are FREE.
Some of the topics include the effects of nonnative earthworms on the environment; the relationship between carbon, photosynthesis, and roots of trees; the relationship between nonnative trout and pacific tree frogs; using harmonic radar to track the flight of beetles; the potential impact of rising levels of carbon dioxide on U.S. forests.
If you’re an elementary or high school teacher, please take a look at this site, too. Even though the journal is designed for the middle school level (ages 11-14), the articles and activities could be useful at other grade levels: for upper elementary students who are interested in science and who could handle the reading level or for high school students with little experience in science thinking and hands-on science or those who struggle with the advanced reading level in traditional textbooks. Or for teachers who want to learn more for themselves! You could also give a copy of the articles that are in Spanish to the Spanish teachers in your school for their students to read “real” materials.
The articles are multidisciplinary, focusing not just on biology and ecology, but also on related topics in the physical and earth sciences. There is an invitation to “login” (which is necessary to purchase hard copies), but I just browsed through the site and downloaded a few articles without registering. Can you tell that I like this site?

Each Early Years column features resources selected by real teachers–and we want yours! We’re seeking Teacher’s Picks on the following themes:

• Investigation Skills
• Literacy Development
• Physical Science
• Communication in Science
• Plants
• Classification
• Social Studies
• Technology
• Habitats
• Asking Questions
• Math and Science Explorations
• Observation Skills
• Weather
• The Senses
• Outdoor Learning

If your resource list is published in the journal, you’ll receive a free book from a selection of books from NSTA Press.
Send your your top five resources (books, websites, multimedia, and so on) on a topic to earlyyearsblog@nsta.org.

The Summer Early Years column An Invertebrate Garden featured Teacher’s Picks from science resource teacher Fred Arnold of Spencerport, New York, who helps teachers and students raise Painted Lady butterflies, mealworms, super mealworms, and milkweed bugs in their classrooms. He finds insects can awaken an appreciation and understanding of the intricacy of our world.

Books

For Teachers

Life on a Little-Known Planet. Howard Ensign Evans. 1993. The Lyons Press.
This book highlights the wonderfully strange habits of insects and is richly described by an entomologist and naturalist.
The Handbook of Nature Study. Anna Botsford Comstock. 1986. Comstock.
Found a preying mantis, a walking stick, or firefly and want to know what it eats, where it lives, how it defends itself? This is a great book for you to demonstrate to your students what it means to “look it up.” It also has terrific ideas for investigations.

For Students

Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! Bob Barner. 1999. Chronicle Books.
Even the youngest bug enthusiast will find these colorful collage rendered illustrations and the rhyming text engaging. Eight common “bugs” are featured. The final pages list details and real-life-sized renderings for students fascinated by the facts.
From Caterpillar to Butterfly. Deborah Heiligman. 1996. HarperTrophy.
Butterflies may be the most easily appreciated of all insects. This book follows the growth of a Painted Lady butterfly raised in a classroom, from caterpillar to adult flying out the window. A brief final section introduces other common butterfly species and lists butterfly centers that can be visited.

Internet

BioKids
Kids’ Inquiry of Diverse Species. University of Michigan, School of Education and Museum of Zoology.
Teachers can use the Field Guides: Invertebrate ID Guide to narrow the field and identify the collected invertebrates, and students can view photos in the Critter Catalog to find a match and learn a little about the animal.
What’s That Bug?
Found a cool bug but no one seems to know what it is? This website was set up to identify insects from submitted photographs. Chances are good that you can find your interesting insect discovery in their enormous library of identified insects, just by browsing the site. Not there? You can send in a picture which, in time, may be identified.
Have other favorite invertebrate resources? Share them below.

To a science teacher, an ideal summer day might include a stroll through a zoo or botanical garden, a cool afternoon in a planetarium or aquarium, a hike in a state or national park with a pair of binoculars and a guidebook, or a visit to a museum. On these personal field trips, we don’t need to worry about permission slips and bus counts – we can enjoy and learn on our own terms with family and friends.

What happens in these out-of-classroom programs is referred to as “informal education.” These experiences allow us to choose and explore topics of personal interest and learn new things. NSTA’s position statement on informal science education recognizes the contributions of informal science institutions and organizations in providing opportunities for lifelong learning. Check out the article Formal vs. Informal Education for a comparison of these.

It’s enjoyable to visit one of these places with another science teacher. The level of conversation is different than when you visit these places alone or with your families. A day exploring one of these venues and discussing science topics is a great way to increase or integrate content knowledge. For example, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, my colleague and I spent a lot of time with the exhibits related to plate tectonics. We learned new content information, and the displays gave us some ideas for sharing this with our students. We took lots of notes. Our spouses (who are not science teachers) eventually gave up and wandered off to other exhibits!

Or visit these places through the eyes of a child or teenager. What strategies do the informal educators use to attract our attention and hold our interest in the exhibits? Learning Science Beyond the Classroom in the summer issue of The Science Teacher describes some of these techniques. Could any of these apply to the formal classroom?

As the price of travel increases, don’t overlook places closer to home. To find a new place to visit, check out the website of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums or the American Association of Museums.

Many of these informal science venues have excellent websites, too. I can spend hours on the website of the Exploratorium in San Francisco with its comprehensive collection of lessons and demonstrations for the classroom. These institutions may also have virtual tours, too. The National Park Service website has armchair views of the parks – not quite the same as being there, but still a good learning experience.

With all that we can learn both onsite and online, perhaps we need to coin a new phrase: informal professional development. This process keeps us informed and up-to-date, extending our previous content knowledge and inspiring us to learn new things. I’m sure that my childhood visits to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia had a profound influence on my own interest in science.

Last August I had four monarch butterfly larvae chewing up milkweed leaves on my kitchen windowsill as fast as I could provide them. The caterpillars were borrowed from the elementary school habitat as eggs to show to children in a workshop in a few weeks. Well, they hatched before the workshop so I showed the caterpillars instead. (So small upon hatching that I didn’t notice for a few days!) There were five to begin with, but one morning I came down and saw a spider with one of the caterpillars (half inch long at that point) in its grip. Needless to say, that spider had to move outside and the rest of the caterpillars moved into a large pretzel container. Here I thought I was protecting these babies by keeping them indoors! The remaining four went home to the school habitat after the workshop.
Journey North, a website from Annenberg Media that engages students in a global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change, has a Monarch butterfly migration page for information and to report sightings.

Who needs a slug? was the question this week at a program I gave at the public library. The children, ages 6-10, carefully picked through habitat-like containers I had compiled the day before from my yard. For some reason slugs were scarce this week, but there were plenty of roly-polies (isopods), millipedes, earthworms, and I even managed to catch a few centipedes—for viewing only as these animals can give a painful bite. With magnifiers in hand, the children made both life-size and diagram-size drawings in a science notebook made from a folded sheet of paper. There were a few die-hards who had to be reluctantly parted from their invertebrate companions.
A wonderful book about the lives of insects for those of you who enjoy a conversational read and want to know “what are they up to?” is Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs by Sue Hubbell (Mariner Books, 1998).
I also enjoyed reading an amusing and eye-opening article about entomophagy (insects as food) in Science News (June 7th, 2008; Vol.173 #18). Apparently insects are full of wonderful protein and minerals! One of the experts, Patrick B. Durst, a senior forestry officer with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s regional office in Bangkok, suggested that removing the heads makes insects more appealing and entomophagy advocate David Gracer says they are no more disgusting than shrimp. How many times do you have to offer a new food to children before they will try it?
Peggy