The Scientific Teacher

One of the most fun (and educational!) things I’ve done as elementary science coordinator was to team up with our amazingly talented language arts coordinator Katrina and create the video series Scientifically Speaking. You can read more about it in my previous post here, but basically it’s an integrated approach to teaching science vocabulary. Since most scientific words are derived from Greek and Latin origins, they are great of inquiry-based word study, where students break down words into their pieces to learn what they mean. It’s a much more interesting and useful approach to learning the meaning and spelling of words that the traditional memorize-and-promptly-forget technique.

Here’s the videos we’ve created so far, with hopefully more episodes to come!

Episode 1: Light  This Scientifically Speaking episode investigates the origins of the words transmit, reflect, and absorb

Episode 2: Light Refraction  This Scientifically Speaking episode about investigates the origins of the words refraction, lens, concave, and convex

Episode 3: Ecosystems  This Scientifically Speaking episode investigates the origins of the words ecosystem, environment, and organism.

Episode 4: Water Cycle  This Scientifically Speaking episode investigates the origins of the words cycle, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection.

Episode 5: Electricity and Magnetism  This Scientifically Speaking episode investigates the origins of the words electricity, current, circuit and magnetism.

Episode 6: Life Cycles  This Scientifically Speaking episode investigates the origins of the words cycle, germination, pollination, reproduction, and metamorphosis

Stay tuned for more coming soon!