Your existing medical terminology lesson plans and textbooks may have served you well, but you need new ideas to supplement your instruction and help your students better comprehend complex concepts.
You want to try new ideas but are afraid they might not work well in your classroom. Worse still, you have a busy schedule and don’t want to waste time on something that won’t resonate with your learners.
But if you continue with your existing plans, you risk your learners not being ready for their advanced courses and certification exams.
AES has helped thousands of teachers like you find relevant lesson plans for teaching medical terminology to help their students prepare for advanced courses and get certified.
In this article, we’ll take a look at five of the best medical terminology lesson plans:
- Medical Terminology Bingo from CTE Online California
- Medical Terminology Domino Cards from Surviving Science
- Medical Terminology for Beginners from The Purposefulu Pedagogy
- Medical Terminology Lessons from Amped Up Learning
- Resources from the Medical Terminology Blog
After reading, you'll have a better idea of which resources are best suited for your classroom.
1. Medical Terminology Bingo from CTE Online California
Knowing relevant medical terms and abbreviations is critical to providing accurate, high-quality care when working in the field. Available free online from CTE Online California, medical terminology bingo is an easy, adaptable game your students can play to help them memorize critical terms and their abbreviations.
Playing bingo will help students become comfortable with medical language through reading, writing, and remembering medical terms.
Medical terminology bingo accomplishes these learning objectives:
- Students will be able to identify and pronounce combining forms used in medical terminology
- Students have the opportunity to see and write combining forms correctly
To play medical terminology bingo, you can provide each student with a packet of medical terms, abbreviations, and forms. Based on these terms, learners will need to fill out their bingo cards. In the process, they will review and write out terminology even before the game begins.
During the game, the teacher will call each term out loud. This allows students to hear the correct pronunciation of each medical term as they mark off their bingo cards. Continuing the game until everyone’s card is completed enables the class to review a maximum number of medical words.
Bingo is an effective review game that promotes reading, writing, and listening skills to help students memorize even the most confusing medical terminology. Since the lesson plans are freely available and highly adaptable, you can use this game to suit the specific vocabulary you need to review in your course.
2. Medical Terminology Domino Cards from Surviving Science
Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) has long been a valuable resource for teachers to augment their instruction with creative games and activities.
Teachers Pay Teachers provider Surviving Science offers a domino cards game to help health science CTE students handle medical terminology.
In this game, students pick up a series of cards that contain mismatched medical terms and definitions. Working in small groups, students must connect each word with its correct description on a different card, like matching dominos with others of the same number.
Medical terminology bingo encourages these learning outcomes:
- Requires students to discuss medical vocabulary in a group setting
- Encourages students to work as a team to memorize terminology and compete against other groups
While these medical terminology domino cards are not free, they are available from Teachers Pay Teachers for the modest price of $3.75. They are also available through a school-funded subscription via TpT School Access. Included are 14 pages of content. Surviving Science estimates the activity will last approximately 45 minutes and works best with students in grades 10-12.
Overall, students will enjoy working as a group to discuss and remind each other of the correct definitions of medical terms. These conversations will help students understand and recall essential definitions, making this game a good choice for reviewing before an exam.
3. Medical Terminology for Beginners from The Purposeful Pedagogy
Another resource available from Teachers Pay Teachers is the Medical Terminology for Beginners lesson package from The Purposeful Pedagogy. This package includes two fun activities to help your students understand medical terminology. In each activity, learners will review over 100 standard medical terms.
Medical Terminology for Beginners includes these two activities:
- Medical Term Detectives
- Take Two and Call Me in the Morning
In Medical Term Detectives, students will use a worksheet to break down long medical terms into smaller parts. Because medical terms are often made up of simpler prefixes, roots, and suffixes, understanding these word parts will help students solve the mystery of complex medical terminology.
For Take Two and Call Me in the Morning, students receive worksheets with diagnoses of patients. Learners will need to separate the term into smaller parts to decide how to treat the patient. This activity allows students to use terminology in the context of actual medical situations.
These Medical Terminology lesson plans are available for just $4.00 or through TpT School Access. The Purposeful Pedagogy also offers these activities as part of the Communication Bundle for Health Science Classes. The bundle includes Medical Terminology for Beginners and five other activity packets for $19.35. All of the activities are appropriate for students in grades 9-12.
Medical Terminology for Beginners is a solid option for teachers looking for two easy-to-use activities geared explicitly towards simplifying complex terminology for their students.
4. Medical Terminology Lesson Plans from The Purposeful Pedagogy on Amped Up Learning
Amped Up Learning is another educational resources website with a variety of resources from The Purposeful Pedagogy. Within the Medical Terminology section, Amped Up Learning offers over a dozen engaging activities from the same provider of Medical Terminology for Beginners.
Many of these activities involve fun themes, from holidays like Halloween and Valentine’s Day to television shows like The Amazing Race and CSI. Each activity is designed to help students have fun while memorizing and appreciating critical terminology.
Amped Up Learning offers these medical terminology resources:
- My Medical Valentine
- Medical Terminology Review Games
- Riddle Me This - Body Organ Edition
- Zombie A&P - Neuroscience, Diagnosis, and Medical Terminology
- Medical Terminology for Beginners
- Anatomical Bitmoji
- The Amazing Anatomical Race
- Anatomical Movement Terminology Puzzle and Game
- Anatomical Movement Terminology Illustrations Worksheet and Flashcards
- Anatomical Body Movement Terminology Worksheet
- Anatomical Movement Terminology Worksheets
- CSI: Anatomical Directions
Any of these resources could be a great choice for teaching medical terminology in your classroom. The variety of lesson plans offered allows you to pick one or more that would be a good fit for your students based on their interests or even the time of year.
Each resource is available from Amped Up Learning for between $2.00 and $10.00 apiece. The price varies based on the number of worksheets and activities included. Teachers interested in purchasing multiple resources can receive a bundle discount on purchases of $50 or more. All of the activities are appropriate for a high school audience.
On the whole, the Purposeful Pedagogy provides a range of fun activities for teaching medical terminology to high school students. It’s a good choice if you are looking for an exciting theme to help make the subject more compelling for your students.
5. Resources from the Medical Terminology Blog
Are you looking for quick quizzes and puzzles you can use to supplement your medical terminology lessons? The Medical Terminology Blog is full of easy-to-use exercises to get your students thinking about medical words and their structure.
Each of these short but stimulating exercises can help your students train their brains to remember challenging terms based on word structure and cognates. For example, a word jumble for rhinorrhagia contains a cartoon of charging rhinoceroses.
The Medical Terminology Blog includes over three dozen exercises to add to your medical terminology lesson plans:
- 12 Medical Terminology Quizzes
- 15 Medical Terminology Crossword Puzzles
- 11 Medical Terminology Cartoon Word Jumbles
The blog even offers two activities addressing the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, helping students understand terminology related to one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare practitioners today.
These puzzles are easy to add to existing medical terminology lessons and are all available for free from the Medical Terminology Blog. Students can complete the exercises directly on the blog’s website, and there is no need for students or teachers to register for an account.
Overall, these activities are convenient, clever memorizing tools and could make a great addition to your medical terminology curriculum.
Save Time While Teaching Medical Terminology
Deciding which projects are the best fit for your classroom will depend on the kind of activities you want to include, your budget for additional resources, and the amount of time you need to fill.
Each of these medical terminology lesson plans can be an effective complement to your curriculum. If you are looking for medical terminology lessons you can implement right now, download these free lesson plans.
This resource includes ready-to-use presentation slides to help you teach anatomic topics like body planes, body directions, and body cavities to your students in a relevant, engaging way:
