Tire-3 Vocabulary Retention and Transfer with Student Created Science Infographics

Abstract

The sixty-three total Grade 7 students presented in this Capstone have been observed to lack using science vocabulary to explain science concepts and to express it concisely. As a comparison, students were provided a curriculum-created science infographic and students answered questions based on the curriculum-created science infographic. The treatment was to allow students to create individual science infographics using their data collected and learned from their paper notebooks, electronic science vocabulary notebooks, and extra relevant information from web searches. Student data was collected by taking count of quantified coded variables from student written work on an essay assessment without infographics, a curriculum-created science infographic, and student-created science infographic artifacts. Data tables and bar graphs were generated to compare the generation of a claim, using Tier-3 vocabulary, using evidence, and writing reasoning of why the evidence was used or supported the claim. Results revealed that student-created science infographics when compared to their assessment results when no infographic was present to them presented a 4.8% decrease in writing an appropriate & relevant claim when creating their own science infographic, a 17.4% increase in using Tier-3 vocabulary, 39.7% increase and 36.5% increase in data presented and evidence explained with Tier-3 vocabulary, respectively.