Building Subject Area Vocabulary through STEM Integration

Do you know what reading domain your students consistently score the lowest on is?

Teaching elementary school for 10 years has showed me that the one consistency in our reading data is the deficiency students perform in vocabulary.

Through creative and play-based learning opportunities we can provide our students with more confidence in their vocabulary and language skills. Allowing your students be flexible and safe in being expressive and creative in ways that go beyond a worksheet or book is the secret. We want our students expressing their understanding in multi modal ways so that we can truly understand what they understand and how they think. Isn’t that the purpose of an assessment anyways?

I was looking for a new way for my students to demonstrate meaning of specific subject area word and how to not only enhance their understanding, but also show others a new view or way of understanding that word in a non-linguistic manner.

As we help our fifth graders, prepare and review for the statewide science assessment, we wanted to try some thing that would still be engaging for them at the end of the year restlessness, as well as be meaningful and helpful to them in reviewing and practicing for the assessment. We invited every fifth grade student down to the cafeteria along with every LEGO element we had in our school. Each student received a science vocabulary term that they were asked to represent through a model using their choice of building material. They could pick to use either LEGO Duplo, color, sorted, LEGO, or even the LEGO Education Spike Essential coding kits.

The students worked diligently side-by-side one another that day, caring so deeply about the word that they were creating. It almost felt like we were on an episode of Lego Masters. I’ve never seen that many students engaged in learning. No one was mixing up, or , getting off task, or not using the time in a meaningful way. It was almost like magic. I remember looking at the floor in the cafeteria and being most surprised that not any LEGO work there.

Once the students finish their bills, we collected them and displayed them for the students to be able to , see and reflect on. Hearing them all chatter about how unique or cool their friends builds were, and how it made a concept like pollination suddenly make more sense. This to me is the purest form of learning and demonstrating how the use of a common toy like Lego brick could be a tool instead for mastering content and deepening subject area of vocabulary, for not native speakers, but also English language learners. It was also just fun.