Let’s get real. Vocabulary stinks. It is imperative for students to know the difference between elements and compounds in order to be successful in chemistry class, but this can seem like such a drag. My students are asked to learn roughly 400 new words during my chemistry class. Over the years I have collected my favorite strategies for teaching vocabulary in chemistry, and I’m here to share them with you!
How to make a vocabulary list
The very first thing you need to do is make a list of all the vocabulary words you want your students to know by the end of the year. I highly suggest looking at your final exam and highlighting all the words your students will need to know in order to be successful. Pulling words from your chemistry standards is also an option!
After you make a list of all the words you want, you’ll need to break it down even further. I’m a big unit person. I am a major proponent of unit mapping and making your students aware of where you are headed. I give my students a copy of the Unit Map (that’s student friendly of course), and I list the vocabulary words up at the top. It gives them a clear vision of what they are learning and the terms they need to understand.
Students need to define the words
What I do next is assign the students a vocabulary/look up assignment for homework. This is probably the most important of the strategies for teaching vocabulary in a chemistry class. Because I’ve broken the course list into unit lists, students need to look up about 20 words per unit. I typically give them a week to do this. I also make sure to look out for words that have multiple meanings, like “saturated” for instance. A saturated solution is different from a saturated hydrocarbon, of course. The first thing my students do is HAND WRITE the definitions. This step is very important to me. I only accept handwritten vocabulary, because I know that if given the option, the students will copy and paste the work instead. I already know they know how to copy and paste, I need to make sure they are learning the words.
Students redefine the words
As the words come up in your daily teaching and learning, students should be redefining the terms in their own way. I allow them to rewrite in words or draw pictures for this part. A lot of the words are tough to conceptualize, so sometimes a drawing does a better job than more words. I usually don’t need them to know a very high level definition to the vocabulary words. For instance, knowing that a “saturated solution” is “full of dissolved stuff” will usually be enough for them to understand the chemistry. This is one of my best methods for teaching vocabulary in chemistry. Who is out there defining words like a walking dictionary? Certainly not me, so I don’t expect my students to do this either.
Read more about how I make sure my students get vocabulary practice here.
Using vocabulary words in class
Pretty much all of my notes involve defining one or more of the vocabulary terms. A lot of the time, the definition that is in the student notes is MY real life definition of the word, not something from the textbook glossary. For instance, oxidation state is “the number assigned to keep track of electron loss or gain,” and in class, I’d say “fancy name for charge.” Judge if you will, but I think that still gets them from point A to point B. I also ask students at the end of the lesson to tell me THEIR definition for terms as our exit question. This is just another opportunity for them to write the definition, and even better, if you have them share out, they also speak their definition and hear the definitions of other students.
Vocabulary Games
This is my favorite part of course. In my classroom, we try to play games as often as possible. Some of my favorites are Head’s Up, Dominoes, Memory and Bingo. For Head’s Up, I give the students some small cards each with a different vocabulary word on it. Then a student doesn’t look at the card and holds it to their forehead. Their partner will define and describe the word until the student holding the card can identify the word. This is a great game because it gives both students some practice with the terms and definitions.
Dominoes
I love these too. Sometimes, you’ll have a unit where a lot of the words are very similar to each other and you need to distinguish them well, think solute and solvent for instance. I have some great vocabulary dominoes that have a mixture of words and definitions that students need to match up. This is an excellent assessment piece because I circle around the room and find out where the gaps are in the student learning. I laminate these dominoes, but you certainly don’t have to.
Vocabulary Memory or Go Fish
I’m not very good at these because I don’t have the best memory, but my students certainly love them. I like to think of it like a paper version of Quizlet Live. The words and definitions are listed on different cards face down on the table. The students need to flip them over in pairs word+definition. If they pair them wrong, they have to flip them back over and try again. If they pair correctly, then they pick them up and get to keep the pair. You could also use these cards in a Go Fish format, with multiple students playing in a circle making pairs. This game is more my speed personally, but it definitely is a bit louder than memory. I laminate these too. Call me crazy – but I want to do this job just once! I have a Memory/Go Fish game for Ionic Formulas available in my store if you’d like to give this a try!
Bingo
This one is really great! I list the vocabulary words on the board that students can choose from (I usually work with around 30 at a time). Students fill in 24 words on the bingo board, and I take all 30 and put them in a bucket. I randomly pull a word out of the bucket and tell the students the definition of the word. Then they need to find the corresponding word on their bingo boards. This one is fun, but in my opinion is really only good for self assessment. It is hard to know who is understanding and who isn’t with this game. I like this for teaching vocabulary to my high school chemistry students who are preparing to study for a test and maybe need some guidance on where to start.
Additional Help
You can buy my bundle of chemistry activities to last your whole school year here. It includes a glossary of terms, and 15 of everything: term lists by unit, crosswords, dominoes, joke deciphers, and flash cards.
