Say What You Mean! Strategies to Help Students Better Communicate Science
Below are materials from the conference presentation of the above title, which focused on getting students to create better descriptions, definitions, and explanations in their science classrooms.
This session is intended to address some of the common “communication” issues we present to students through written tasks and questioning. We all know that students struggle with short answer or essay questions in science, and there are a variety of reasons for this. But, if we think about what we ask students to do, we may find that some of the simple things we assume they can do are actually pretty complex communication skills that we don’t ever give them the tools to address. Sometimes, the kids know the science – they just have a hard time expressing it in a written format.
In this session, we examined three such things that we ask students, and look at the problems that usually arise with each, what we really should expect from each, and look at some strategies that we can use in the classroom to help ensure that students can actually communicate their understanding of a topic to others, including us. These three things are:
- Descriptions
- Definitions
- Explanations (or, more specifically, scientific explanations)
Presentation
Handout
Say What You Mean! Strategies to Help Students Better Communicate Science