Let’s face it, not everyone likes science. I know that it seems ridiculous, but it’s unfortunately the truth. For those students that struggle with science the vocabulary it’s even more of a challenge. This year my partner and I set out to change how we kept the vocabulary fresh in the students minds each unit.
In the past we would teach a unit and then move on to the next unit without much consideration of the vocabulary. We knew that we would have a few weeks before our state tests to get the students prepared and we would always hit the previous vocabulary then.
This year we made a decision to spiral the vocabulary into every single unit we taught. Starting at the beginning of the year we began to build a word bank of words that students absolutely had to know. About every two weeks we would give them a quick quiz at the beginning of class that had nothing but the word on it. Obviously the list was much shorter during the first semester, but at this point in the year the list has grown to nearly 75 words. Most of our students (reluctant learners included) can zip through the quiz in under 15 minutes. It’s truly a remarkable thing to watch.
I was hesitant to do it at first because I didn’t want to drill and kill them, but the time that it takes is minimal and having a basic understanding of the vocabulary is absolutely critical for applying their learning to real-world concepts. We have come to that point in the year where we were usually having to re-teach a ton of old concepts. Because the students have a strong foundation with the vocabulary, we have been able to really talk a lot more about application of scientific principles rather than the basics. It’s been a lot of fun to watch them grow over the year. They are really proud when they can fill out an entire sheet of tough vocabulary words in that short of a time period.
We have always spiraled assessment questions into our tests, but I feel that this has really given us a leg up on prepping them for their future science classes.
8th Grade Science Texas Vocabulary List – this the list that we have been using. This is by no means a total list, but the ones that we feel are the most difficult for students to remember.
