Joel Kenyon

Chlorine is Green, Zoos Have Life and Kings are Killed: Using Etymology in Science It started with a happy accident. I had finished a lesson with my Year 8s and, surprisingly, we had powered through the material with 15 minutes to spare. My plan for the next lesson was to introdu…

New Blog Post 📝

Etymology in science usually stops at just photosynthesis, but I use it almost every single lesson.

Here are a few stories of some of my lessons and the impact teaching etymology has made on pupil understanding and literacy.

inquestion.co.uk/2025/11/28/e...

There are a few words in RE that pop up.

Genesis and genetics is a fave of mine.

Malignant and malevolent or Atheist and asexual and abiotic using the prefix a- are good ones.

At the end of every lesson when the pupils are standing behind their chairs, I do a quick walk around.

At a previous school I remember discovering that a pupil had deconstructed a whole pencil and shoved it into a plug socket... 🙃

I absolutely love having a brand new lab!

This is now our third refurbished lab in 2 years and it has been a pleasure to teach and do Practicals with students

For illness, I completely understand (although there probably already systems in place that cost a lot less than this)

However, the org that has these out is no isolation, suggesting it is an attendance thing. For that they are downstream and do little to address the actual issue of attendance.

Completely agree. Love that.

Although, why can't teams or Google classroom be used instead?

Most schools already pay for this anyway, the machine just looks like a gimmick.

My skepticism is that a pupil isn't going to treat it like a lesson unless they have the buy in... But if they had the buy in there is another underlying cause to not coming into school.

For pupils who are unwell, I can really understand it, but yes, there are much cheaper alternatives than this.

I would also be curious about their cost.

The machine itself is from a private org, so profit is involved.

Surely there are better ways to spend this money that would be addressing the root cause of their lack of attendance?

Obviously it would be unethical to do a study on this where these variables were controlled for, but it is exactly this as to why I'm skeptical.

I've taught pupils who have been out of school for 2 years and then come back. If I gave them this and they came back, I could claim it was this machine.

I agree with the illness part, fully makes sense.

However, when it comes to attendance, yes, giving the pupil this could make them come back to school, but how do we know they wouldn't anyway?

Was it just the act of engaging them that brought them back in, or this?

Oh no, same here! But I get the premise.

Logically it sounds right but in practice it doesn't often work that way

a man in a blue shirt and tie is pointing at a bulletin board with a lot of papers on it . ALT: a man in a blue shirt and tie is pointing at a bulletin board with a lot of papers on it .

Look at these connections!!

We continuously talk about the impact covid had on pupils development, but having them watch via a camera is exactly the same, of not worse.

This isn't fixing the root cause of the problem and is a very downstream approach for poor attendance or SEND.

I get it with illness but if your aim is for pupils with poor attendance to come back to school, surely this sends the message that they can just stay home?

This essentially replaces learning with a video. Which is less effective.

Reminds me of Covid which for many was a complete waste of time.

What would you do if one appeared in your classroom?

Does anyone have these AV1 robots in their school?

They essentially are a camera in your lesson where a pupil streams from home.

Personally, I would flat out refuse to have this in my classroom but I'm curious...

Love this!

I've shared this before but always happy if it finds a new audience somewhere, and I hope the author would be too. It's pretty old but some students, particularly if they're linguists, love it.

There is this idea that if KS3 is taught really well, you don't have to reteach a lot of it in KS4.

But, I spend a lot of my time essentially teaching KS3 content whilst adding on X, Y and Z.

I think etymology makes this transition a lot easier.

This is why etymology is so important.

When it comes to me teaching polymers and monomers, imagine how much easier it would be if the students already knew what the prefix meant from their RS lessons!

Unfortunately, this is true.

With KS3, I have some time I can dedicate to literacy, in KS4, I really don't have much.

Oooo I like this!

Will be stealing it!

You'll be glad to know I will now be quoting Macbeth when I teach omnivore, carnivore and herbivore to my Year 11s 😅

On this, I have always wanted to introduce more links to actual literature when it comes to etymology but I would have to sit with an English teacher for hours.

As part of world book day a few years ago, I read Issac Asimov to students because of the word robotics.

A brilliant post.

Disciplinary literacy isn't a literacy specific to a discipline; it is universal literacy as manifested in a discipline.

Etymology and morphology taught across disciplines provides a linguistic schema which aids access to all subjects. Prefixes and suffixes are cross-curricular.

Thanks so much.

Completely agree. I remember a CPD on "everyone is a teacher of literacy" with another science teacher saying that in science we can't do that.

But science is up there with the easiest of subjects to add literacy to. Almost every word in science can teach 10 more.

Chloro is my favourite one at the moment.

Group 7 is an interesting one.
Fluorine comes from flow, the same root as the word fluent.

I said to the pupils last week, continue learning etymology and you'll be fluent in understanding science.

Even they groaned 😅

I'm jealous! I would have loved to have done Latin in school.

Chlorine is Green, Zoos Have Life and Kings are Killed: Using Etymology in Science It started with a happy accident. I had finished a lesson with my Year 8s and, surprisingly, we had powered through the material with 15 minutes to spare. My plan for the next lesson was to introdu…

New Blog Post 📝

Etymology in science usually stops at just photosynthesis, but I use it almost every single lesson.

Here are a few stories of some of my lessons and the impact teaching etymology has made on pupil understanding and literacy.

inquestion.co.uk/2025/11/28/e...

Threshold for repaying student loans to converge with minimum wage Surprise move from chancellor means some university graduates in England may have to pay back debts sooner

Source: www.ft.com/content/13a0...