Wild Wonderful Words

Follow the suggestions provided in the Growing Up WILD (GUW) guide. In order to address additional content from Ohio's Learning Standards in Mathematics, include and/or emphasize the following academic vocabulary:

• Area – While area concepts are not introduced at this level, they are mentioned in Critical Area 4 for 2nd grade as “. . . students develop a foundation for understanding area . . . in later grades.” Attention should be paid to describing area as a way to measure part of the plane. Too often, students associate area with a formula as opposed to a concept.
• Data – Emphasize that all of the measurements that the students collect during their field study are data. While some of the data may be represented by drawings or terms, it is still data. In mathematics, it is still very worthwhile to collect both numerical and non-numerical data in an attempt to analyze the data set. As students progress through elementary and middle school, the focus shifts towards numerical data, but exposure to all data types helps build a better foundation in understanding data.
  
• Time – Time is another measurable attribute that should be addressed. At this point, students have an understanding of time and are in the progression of learning how to measure and write time.
• Height – Again, the concept of height becomes problematic at later grades as students often have misconceptions about the difference between length and height. Height is the perpendicular distance of an object from the base, while length is a more general measure of distance. In Figure 1, the plant’s height and length are the same for the plant. However, the height and length of the plant are quite different for the plant in Figure 2..