| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Accretion Learning | is the subconscious or subliminal, process by which individuals learn important things like language, prejudices, habits, social rules and behaviors. Accretion is a process where individuals are totally unaware that learning is taking place. Accretion accounts for about 70% of what individuals know and understand. |
| Acquisition | tends to be more relevant to students and it appears to be the conscious choice of how students want to learn. This approach involves self-instruction, experimenting, inquiry, exploring, and general curiosity. Acquisition accounts for about 20% of what students learn. |
| Affixes | an attachment to the end or beginningof base or root words. A generic term that describes prefixes and suffixes word parts "fixed to" either the beginnings of words (prefixes) or the ending of words (suffixes). For example, the word disrespectfulhas two affixes, a prefix (dis-) and a suffix (-ful). |
| Alphabetic Principle | the notion that letters making a word have corresponding sounds, thus letters and sounds can be placed together to build words. |
| Assimilation | the cognitive process where information from the environment is integrated into existing schematato use and apply recently learned knowledge into one's thought pattern in solving problems. |
| Authentic Assessment | a technique to examine students' collective abilities via real-world challenges that requires them to apply their relevant skills and knowledge. |
| Bandura, Albert | found that although environment causes behavior, behavior also causes environment as well. Bandura labeled this concept reciprocal determinism,"both the world the individual's behavior "cause" affect each other. Bandura is considered a "father" of the cognitive movement, or, observational learning, commonly referred to as the famous, Bobo Doll studies. Bandura called this phenomenon, observational learning or modeling, better known as the social learning theory. |
| Behaviorism | a theory of animal and human learning that focuses on observable behaviors and ignores psychological activities. |
| Choral Reading | two or more individuals reading aloud from the same text in unison to enhance oral reading fluency. |
| Classical Conditioning | suggests that behavior is somewhat controlled by association and illustrated after a neutral stimulus accepts the eliciting properties of an unconditioned stimulus through the pairing of some unconditioned stimulus with the neutral stimulus. |
| Cognitive Coaching | – teaching students to use their own thinking processes to solve problems. |
| Cooperative Learning | is an instructional approach that encourages students to work collaboratively as partners or in small groups on clearly defined tasks. |
| Constructivism | constructivist theory is a general framework for instruction based upon the study of cognition. Constructivism is based on the belief that children construct meaning from their experiences, and are not just passive receivers of information. Much of the theory is linked to child development research (especially Piaget's). The theory suggest that students reflect on their experiences, and construct an understanding of the world they live governed by their own "rules" to make sense of their experiences. |
| Conventional Spelling | –standard spelling is the correct form for written documents. |
| Critical Thinking | the thought processes students are able to rely on relative to problem solving. Here, students use creativity, analysis, and logic regarding their ability to analyze facts, make comparisons, generate ideas, defend view points, draw inferences, evaluate arguments and solve problems. |
| Deductive Reasoning | initiated from the general to the specific, and often referred to as the "top-down" approach. Deductive reasoning is more narrow and primarily concerned with testing hypotheses. In contrast, Inductive Reasoning is more open-ended and exploratory, especially during the beginning of the investigation. |
| Dewey, John (1859-1952)- | was concerned with how student the classroom environment affected learning. |
| Digraphs | two letters that represent one speech sound, as EA in BREAD, CH in CHAT, or NG in SING. |
| Diphthongs | - two-vowel combinations where both vowels are heard, but not quite making their usual sounds because of the blending, i.e., oy in TOY. |
| Echo Reading | a strategy where the teacher reads a line or passage with good expression, and calls on students to read it back. This is a good technique to use with Emergent Readers to help them build reading fluency. |
| Emergence Learning | s manifested via structuring, patterning, and constructing meaning, understanding, and ideas that did not exist initially. This process involves insight, reflection, creative expression, and/or group interactions. This method of learning is dependent on intelligence, synthesis, intuition, creativity, and problem-solving skil |
| Emergent Reader | the reader at the beginning stages of learning to read and developing an association of print with meaning. During this stage of reading development, children engage in reading play and retelling familiar stories from memory and using pictures to make predictions. |
| Etymology | the history or study of words. |
| Experiential Learning | credited to Carl Rogers who suggested that all human beings have a natural propensity to learn. The role of the teacher is to facilitate learning via: setting a positive classroom climate for learning; clarifying the purposes and rules; organizing and providing learning resources; balancing both intellectual and emotional components of learning; and ensuring that students engage in self-evaluation to assess their progress and success. |
| Equilibration | coined by Piaget to identify a process that regulates tension between assimilation (information) and accommodation (learning). Equilibration implies that individuals learn through experiences somewhat different from previous experiences. Thus, their mental structure is modified in small steps. Individuals learn best when the new incoming information is slightly different from existing information. This process will allow the new information to be assimilated with a small degree of accommodation. |
| Formative Evaluation | ongoing evaluation during an instructional sequence to allow midstream adaptation and improvement of the project. |
| Gardner, Howard | credited with coining the Multiple Intelligences Theory which is a pluralized way of understanding the intellect. Researchers believe that each person's level of intelligence is made up of autonomous faculties that can work individually or in concert with other faculties. Gardner identified seven such faculties he labels as `intelligences' including: musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, special intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and, intrapersonal intelligence. |
| Guided Reading | is a strategy where experienced readers provide structure via modeling strategies in order to move beginning readers towards independence. |
| Guided Writing | – classroom teacher supports student development with the writing process. Students are required to write sentences or passages while the teacher guides the process and instruction through conferences and minilessons. |
| Homographs | words that are spelled alike but have different sounds and meanings (bow and arrow vs. bow of a ship) . |
| Idioms | the use of words peculiar to a particular language with a meaning that differs from typical syntactic patterns or from the literal meaning of its parts taken together. Some examples of idiomatic expressions would include, "John kicked the bucket" means "John passed away," or "chill out" means "relax, don't sweat it." |
| Information Processing | a theory advanced by George A. Miller who stressed the idea that short-term memory could only hold 5-9 chunks of information (seven plus or minus two). The term chunk represents any meaningful unit (i.e., digits, words, pictures, etc.). The concept of chunking and the limited capacity of short-term memory became a basic element of all subsequent memory theories. |
| Initial Blends | the joining of two or more consonant sounds, represented by letters that begins a word without losing the identity of the sounds, such as /bl/ in black, the joining of the first consonant and vowel sounds in a word, such as /b/ and /a/ in baby. This skill is important in learning phonics. |
| Language Experience Approach (LEA) | a method of teaching reading by using the reader's own dictated language. This approach allows the reader to read words common to their environment. |
| Mastery Learning | proposes that all children can learn when provided with the appropriate learning conditions in the classroom. |
| Metacognition involves several important elements including, designing, monitoring, and assessing a specific plan of action. Steps students should take to enhance metacognition: (1) identify how much they know about a specific topic to consider for developing a project, (2) have an idea of exactly how much time they want to devote to the project, (3) have an idea of when the project is expected to be completed, (4) monitor their progress by reviewing their work relative to the project, and (5) assess their performance and/or satisfaction with the project or assignment. During this phase of the project, students should ask themselves, "am I satisfied?" or, "can I do a better job?" | "if so, how?" In short, metacognition is simply the process of "thinking about thinking." In fact, good readers use metacognition before they read anythingin order to help them clarify their purpose for reading and to preview the text. |
| Mnemonic Device | a device, such as a formula or rhyme, used as an aid in remembering. |
| Morphemes | word forms and another component of syntax. Morphemes are also the smallest meaningful units in language and word parts that could also change the meaning of a word. |
| Onomatopoeia | the terms used to describe words whose pronunciations suggest their meaning (e.g., meow, buzz, zoom). |
| Operant Conditioning – | coined by B.F. Skinner, is based upon the premise that learning is a function of change in overt behavior. The change in behavior is a result of the student's response to events (stimuli) occurring in one's environment. A response produces a consequence such as, jumping rope or learning to swim. When a particular Stimulus-Response (S-R) pattern is reinforced (rewarded), the individual is conditioned to respond. Skinner examined how learning was affected by stimuli presented after an act was performed. He discovered that certain stimuli caused the organism to repeat an act more frequently. He labeled "stimuli" with this effect the "reinforces." Today, classroom teachers are the recipients of this finding by using reinforcement as a means of controlling and motivating student behavior. The term "behavior modification" is an important technique teachers employ in improving the learning and classroom behavior of their students. |
| Orthography | the study of the nature and use of symbols in a writing system; correct or standardized spelling according to established usage in a given language. |
| Pavlov, Ivan P. | (1849-1936) discovered "conditioning" and initially believed that all behavior was reflexive. Pavlov thought that all learning, whether the elicited responses in animals, or of highly conceptual behaviors in humans was due to the mechanisms of classical conditioning. We now believe theory to be wrong. |
| Phoneme | A minimal sound unit of speech that, when contrasted with another phoneme, affects the naming of words in a language, such as /b/ in book contrasts with /r/ in rook, /l/ in look. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that change the meanings of spoken words. For example, if you change the first phoneme in cat from /c/ to /f/, the word bat changes to fat. The English language has about 41-44 phonemes. A few words, such as a or oh, have only one phoneme. Most words have more than one phoneme. The word ifhas two phonemes /i/ and /f/. |
| Phonics | teaching reading and spelling that stresses basic symbol-sound relationships and their application in decoding words in beginning instruction. |
| Phonological Systemis important in both oral and written language. There are 26 letters and 44 sounds and many ways to combine the letters | particularly the vowels–to spell many of the sounds. Sounds are called phonemes, and represented in print, and Graphemes are letter combinations. |
| Phonogram | a succession of letters representing the same phonological unit in different words, such as ed in red, bed, fed. or, IGHT in FLIGHT, MIGHT and TIGHT. |
| Piaget, Jean (1896-1980) | a Swiss biologist and psychologist constructed a model of child development and learning based on the idea that the developing child builds cognitive structures or mental maps, "schemes," or networked concepts for understanding and responding to physical experiences within their environment. The child's cognitive structure advances in sophistication with development and grows from a few innate reflexes such as crying to highly complex mental activities. |
| Portfolio Assessment | provides a body of student work--essentially, a portfolio--that can be used to evaluate student performance over time. |
| Pre-writing | the initial creative stage of writing, prior to drafting, in which the writer formulates ideas, gathers information, organizes or plans. |
| Reflective Teaching | involves the ability to: research & explore, question & analyze, and make changes to both lessons and curriculum based on learning results experienced in the classroom. |
| Rime | the part of a syllable (not a word) consisting of its vowel and any consonant sounds that come after it, the first vowel in a word along with all of the sounds that follow, for example, /-utterfly/ in "butterfly." |
| Rogers, Carl | Experiential Learning |
| Round-robin Reading | an outdated reading strategy that attempts to teach students to read by having them follow other students in reading specific passages of text identified by the teacher. This technique is not recommended because it hampers reading fluency, its boring, and it causes students to lose interest in the story. |
| Rubric | a set of scoring guidelines for assessing student work including a summary listing of the characteristics that distinguish high quality work from low quality assignments. |
| Scaffolding | is a metaphoric term used by Vygotsky to show how parents and teachers provide temporary assistance to children/students by modeling appropriate behavior or skills. In the classroom, teachers model or demonstrate specific strategies and gradually shift the responsibility to the student to demonstrate. |
| Schemata- a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory. There are three types of schemata's, content, language, and textual. 1.) Content Schemata | includes systems of factual knowledge, values, and cultural conventions. 2.) Language Schemata - includes sentence structure, grammatical inflections, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, and cohesive structures. 3.)Textual Schemata - includes the rhetorical structure of different modes of text, (i.e., recipes, fairy tales, research papers, and science textbooks). |
| Semantics | the study of the meaning in language and the analysis of the meanings of words, phrases, sentences. |
| Sight Word | a word that is easily recognized as a whole and does not require word analysis for identification or pronunciation, (i.e., Dolch 220 Sight Vocabulary List). |
| Skinner, B.F. | Operant Conditioning |
| Summative evaluation | evaluation that comes at the conclusion of an educational program or instructional sequence. |
| Syllabication | the division of words into syllables [the minimal units of sequential speech sounds comprised of a vowel sound or a vowel-consonant combination, as /a/, /ba/, /ab/, /bab/, etc.] |
| Syntactic System | the structural (grammar) organization of English that regulates how words are combined into sentences. Word order is important in English and during the pre-school years, children learn to understand, ask questions, construct statements, and many of the capitalization and punctuation rules that elementary students learn reflect the syntactic system of language. This applies to simple, compound, and complex sentences. |
| Thorndike, Edward | Connectionism |
| Whole Language | an approach to reading instruction focusing on reading for meaning and the integration of the four aspects of language reading, writing, listening, and speaking. |
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