Playing at Midland Secondary School, I had the opportunity to discover the impact technology enabled learning can have on vocabulary development. Having taught science, I know that one barrier to students continuing to study science in the senior grades is the language component. Studying sciences, specifically biology, requires a lot of new language learning in addition to scientific concepts.
In Lisa Coughlin's grade 9 science class I got to see students recording videos of their peers describing ecosystems they had created. They also recorded video of microscopic living things in pond water through the microscope lens. From here they used the video and images with a classification key to identify them. As one group of students found something they could identify you could hear "I AM A SCIENTIST" from across the room.
Students posted videos and images to their e-Portfolios where they can be viewed by the teacher as well. None of these specific activities were graded, but Lisa used this information to determine next steps in her instruction. They also facilitated conversations with students about their progress and next steps.
What I noticed while walking around and chatting with students was their vocabulary. If they didn't have the words, they went looking for them. All this conversation, explaining their understanding and using technology to document their learning has led to a significant improvement in their vocabulary use.
Thank you Lisa for inviting me into your classroom and for sharing your learning with me!
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