Every academic subject has it’s own unique “language’.
Math uses words like variable and sum. Science has potential energy and magnetism. Social studies has words like executive and congressional. Even Literature has it’s own vocabulary with words like onomatopoeia and alliteration.
Kids sometimes struggle with understanding all of these vocabulary words. Here are some tips to help your children comprehend these subject oriented “languages”.
Help Kids Understand the Language of Every Subject
Use Language That is Interesting and Easier to Understand
Start by explaining the terms in easier, every day language that is interesting. It would be nice if textbooks did this, but often times they don’t. So it is up to us to do the job. Here are some examples of how I would explain something.
A variable I would describe as “a letter which stands for a mystery number”. That helps kids to see it as something interesting (a mystery) and easy to understand (a letter). The term economics means “the making (by a company), the delivery (to stores, homes, etc.), and use (Yay! I get to enjoy this) of goods (things) and services (something is done for me)”. The words in parenthesis of this latter example show how I would describe economics to a child or teen. See how simpler and more descriptive language can make words easier to understand?
Use Previous Knowledge
It can help to tie a word to something your child already knows. If you just taught your child that molecules speed up and spread out during “evaporation”, then you can describe how they slow down and move closer together during “condensation”.
Here’s how you can relate x-intercept and y-intercept in Algebra I to football. (Sounds crazy, I know.) Ask your child what an “interception” is in football. They will probably tell you that it is when the football is caught by a player on the other team. Great. Now explain to them that the x-intercept is like when someone catches the ball on the x axis. The “ball” is the point is plotted on the line. The y-intercept is when the ball (or point) is caught on the y axis.
Relevant Words
It’s helpful to use a relevant word or word with the same beginning letter. I have used this trick many times over the years. It really works well. Here are some samples of how I do that.
“Judicial” can be related to the word “judge” since kids typically know what a judge is. I help kids keep arteries and veins straight by telling them that arteries move blood away from the heart (see the two a’s). Numerator and denominator are sometimes mixed up by kids in math. I help them remember that the denominator is the bottom number by tying it to the word “down”, D for denominator and D for down.
Use Imagery
Over the years I have found it very beneficial to have children draw pictures to help them understand a word or concept. Let’s take the word “saturation”. I would have students draw a glass of water and fill it with lots of dots and put a little pile of extra dots at the bottom to show that the liquid was saturated and won’t hold any more. I would then have them label the picture with the term. For the word “executive branch”, I might have the kids draw a picture of the President sitting at a big desk. Sometimes it is good for you to tell your child what to draw, and sometimes it is a good idea to let them come up with their own image.
Those are my tricks for understanding the “foreign language” in every subject. If you found this post helpful, please share it with your friends.
Many blessings,
