: Talking like scientists: how to teach science vocabulary in primary school Teaching primary age children to use scientific vocabulary confidently is empowering and motivating

Ellie Caple and Rebekah Edwards are evidence advocates at Tudor Grange Research School

We live in a world where scientific literacy has never been more important: a social media rich world, awash with fake news and unsubstantiated opinions. Being able to access scientific literature, critically evaluate scientific concepts and form reasoned opinions is not an aspiration for our young people; it is a basic requirement for flourishing lives. How else would they be able to make an informed decision about, say, whether to have a vaccination?

This journey begins in primary school, and the EEF’s new Primary Science Guidance Report is a fantastic resource for science leads, class teachers and any staff with leadership responsibility in primary schools.

Its first recommendation is that we develop pupils’ scientific vocabulary: ensuring that young people understand the language of science is an important step to their active engagement in science.

At Tudor Grange Academies Trust, science teachers followed the report’s advice to identify science specific vocabulary. We did this by working collaboratively, working across year groups and schools. We made sure to ask secondary teachers to the words primary colleagues identified, and vice versa. This gave us confidence that our transitions are carefully planned, and progress smoothly, avoiding needless repetition or excessive jumps.

The science curriculum allows many opportunities for revisiting vocabulary, but we wanted to ensure that this was planned, repeated engagement rather than accidental repetition. For example, the topic Light is introduced in Year 3 and then revisited in Year 6. Which words should we introduce in Year 3? Which additional words would the children need to learn in Year 6? How would we ensure that these words were retained during Years 4 and 5?

Key words are taught explicitly, using a standardised approach which highlights the phonology and morphology of the word. For example, looking at prefixes such as photo- meaning light, to better understand the term photosynthesis or suffixes such as ‑meter, meaning to measure, such as when using a thermometer to measure temperature. This allows teacher to connect different concepts and build on prior knowledge.

These words are given a clear definition, their use is modelled in a sentence and (where appropriate) linked to an action:

This word is then reinforced throughout the lesson, with planned opportunities to use it in discussion and questioning. It is then revisited systematically through future retrieval activities.

Explicitly teaching scientific vocabulary enables children – and the adults they will become – to understand and use this language confidently. It allows them to access the scientific literature they will encounter in the news, social media, product warning labels, election campaigns, advertisements and so much more. Equipping our children to talk like scientists is a crucial step on the path to becoming the scientists of the future.

But it is not the final step and our conversations about vocabulary led to cross-phase conversations what it means to be a scientist. As the report says:

One outcome of these conversations was the identification of the six skills we feel are central to ​‘being a scientist’. Each has an accompanying image to visualise the science curriculum intent, and we share these with children so they understand that we see them as scientists, and what this means:

We are developing the use of these in curriculum planning documents across both primary and secondary phases to focus attention on our goal of developing scientists. In this, we have been helped by the rest of the EEF’s report, which goes onto recommend that we encourage pupils to think, write and work scientifically, and we’ll be sharing more blogs about our work in the coming weeks. Sign up to our newsletter here, or follow us on Twitter here, to stay up to date.