Filling in the Text: A Strategy for Learning Biology Terminology Available to Purchase

To help students in a college-level cell biology course develop their technical vocabulary and scientific literacy, a series of fill-in-the blank texts were developed based on figures or diagrams taken from the class textbook, Power Point presentations, or the internet. Each figure was followed by an extended paragraph containing 20 to 30 blank spaces and a list of possible terms or phrases that students could use to fill in the blanks. These texts can be used as part of homework assignments, discussions, or exams in face-to-face or online classes. This approach is very flexible and can be adapted for courses in anatomy and physiology, botany and zoology, or ecology and environmental science. The use of these texts is consistent with previous studies that have shown students best master abstract terms when they are presented along with a figure or used in longer sentence frames or written contexts.