Features of Scientific Texts

Otis and Pearl are creating an electrical circuit for a science competition. They are using a scientific book to help them! As they create their circuit, let's learn about the features of scientific texts. You might remember text features are the parts of a book or article, that are not the main body of text. Today, we will look at some text features that you often see in scientific texts. One such text feature are pictures. These can be illustrations or photos. Locating pictures is helpful because they give a visual to go with the text. Pictures help you answer questions such as 'what is the text trying to show me?' For example, this picture shows us what an electrical circuit looks like when it is set up! Another text feature often seen in science texts are diagrams. These show how to set different things up. This can be very helpful if you want to conduct an experiment, or want to know the steps to follow when setting something up. Diagrams often show the materials needed. And can help answer questions like 'what does the test or experiment look like?' In this diagram, we can see the steps and how we should set up an electrical circuit to turn on a light bulb! Other text features of science texts are graphs and charts. Graphs and charts are very important in science because they help to show results and findings visually in one place. They can help answer questions such as 'what do the results and patterns show me?' For example, this chart shows us the battery size, and how many hours the circuit lit up the light bulb for. You might say a pattern here is the more powerful a battery, the longer the light bulb stays lit! In science texts, you will often find bold words that are vocabulary specific to the topic. These bold words show up in a text feature called a glossary. The glossary is usually found at the end of the book, and will define these bold words for you. The words or phrases in a glossary are always in alphabetical order. For example, we can find the definitions of 'current' and 'voltage' that we saw in the text. It looks like Otis and Pearl have finished building their circuit, so let's review! Remember, some features of scientific texts include pictures, diagrams, charts and graphs and a glossary! Oh, it looks like Pearl has a great idea! "Huh! How did our light bulb end up there!"