Previous work

• De gran vull ser lingüista (2004-2005)
• Parlant de llengua amb nens i nenes (2005-2006)
• Bústia neològica escolar (2006)
  

Goals

• Collecting systematic and homogeneous material which allows us to study what children know about the most basic concepts of the sciences at early stages of education (Primary School), which means getting to know underlying and obstacle ideas that may distort the learning process.
  
• Providing appropriate materials which are close to the children’s needs (principle of adequacy)
  • Creating dictionaries made out of children’s definitions
  • Elaborating educational games to work on the scientific lexicon
  • Establishing an inventory of cognitive representations that primary school children
  • Creating tools and resources in order to work scientific lexicon.
• At present, the project team is working in
  1. The translation of the First illustrated medical dictionary to different languages
     
  2. The digital edition of the dictionaries
  3. The translation of the Sciences Dictionary to Portuguese

Methodology

The aims of the project were developed among the following stages:

• Definition stage: project design and selection of schools and terms to be worked with
• Preparation stage: scheduling of working sessions, design of appropriate exercises and model worksheets, establishment of material collection calendar, design of database and preparation of material work
• Material collection stage: systematical work with primary school children
• Storing stage: scanning of drawings and introduction of information into the database
• Analysis stage: accurate analysis of the information
• Applications development stage: design and implementation of applications
• Dissemination stage: spreading of the results through talks, discussions, conferences and journals.
  
  

Worksheets selection

Worksheets made by children aged from six to eight in which they define scientific terms, such as earth, crater, climate and citizen in the form of a written explanation and a drawing.

Drawings selection