Menu
All teachers give lab safety instruction, right? Those instructions include vocabulary; terms students should know to do the work of learning. Lab safety instruction includes learning how and when to wear chemical splash goggles (whenever chemicals, glassware, or heat are present.) They learn what to wear on lab day, how to handle flames and glassware and chemicals, and how to operate and lab equipment they may need. A quiz might be used to document student mastery of lab safety protocols and procedures. I wrote such a quiz, several years back. One true/false question I asked:
T/F It is permissible to walk barefoot or wear sandals in lab.
I was taken aback when several students raised their hands, one at a time. When I approached, each one whispered the same question:
“What does permissible mean?”
Permissible. Seriously.
This was my first realization that there was more to science vocabulary than memorizing science terms and their definitions. Students have likely seen the words listed below in contexts other than science – contexts in which the terms may have meanings unrelated to the meanings used in science. When students attempt to apply the everyday use meanings to science terms, it usually does not end well.
Some of these terms can be used correctly even with very young students; other terms are more often used (incorrectly) by students in the upper grades. Listen and watch for opportunities in which students might be tempted to use the terms and help them make good choices. The list below, and the linked handout can be given to students before starting work or as they begin to write. Let them write, then use the handout to make their own edits. Allow students to exchange their work with another student for the purpose of finding inappropriately used terms, and then each student can edit their own work.
• Claim – a statement based on evidence that answers the experimental question (or addresses the hypothesis)
• Evidence – data gathered for the purpose of answering the question in the claim. Might be qualitative. Often quantitative.
• Reasoning – using understanding of scientific concepts to make a logical connection between claim and evidence.
• Rebuttal – alternative explanation or claim. Must be viable, based on the evidence.
• Reflection – What went wrong? How might data collection be improved? What were some genuine limitations to this study?
• Data ( a plural noun) measurements and/or observations made during an investigation for the purpose of informing the claim.
• Limitation – Also known as “experimental error,” a factor that was not of could not be controlled for and subsequently interferes with results. For example, a balance that measures with the precision of 0.1 g would be a limitation if quantities were very small.
• Hypothesis – a testable statement made, after reading literature, that describes possible outcomes.
• Theory – a possible explanation for a collection of widely accepted knowledge.
• Law – description of an event in nature that happens over and over under the same conditions.
• Inference, infer – a conclusion formed from known facts; the process of doing so
• Experimental error – a situation present during data collection. It cannot be rectified by re-doing the trial. And example would be a trace amount of the product of a chemical reaction that clings to the inside of a beaker, or
• Model – a physical, conceptual, or mathematical representation that helps us visualize a real phenomenon that is difficult to observe directly.
An activity that has helped my students become familiar with terms used in science writing can be found here: Claim, Evidence, Reasoning Terms.