Build to deconstruct and re-construct: collaborative development of a school science dictionary

Abstract

This paper presents the collaborative methodology used in the creation of a school dictionary of science for children aged between 5 and 8 years, based on a corpus of definitions given by children in the Catalan language. The work was conducted over a period of 3 years with 500 children who defined and described the most basic terms of science. From the corpus, we selected only the accumulated information which was scientifically positive and thus produced definitions without adding new information. Finally, the article demonstrates the suitability of the dictionary through the results of a lexical comprehension test carried out with 160 students. These results allow the carrying out of future plans which work the language with scientific knowledge from the beginnings: there is not science without words to represent it or to communicate it.