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GLOSSARY edTPA (Academic Language of Assessment)

Terms in this set (42)

Language Demands
Specific ways that academic language (vocabulary and/or symbols, functions, discourse, syntax) is used by students to participate in learning tasks through reading, writing, listening, and/or speaking to demonstrate their disciplinary understanding.
Language Functions
The content and language focus of the learning task, represented by the active verbs within the learning outcomes.
Vocabulary
Includes words and phrases that are used within disciplines including: (1) words and phrases with subject-specific meanings that differ from meanings used in everyday life (e.g., table); (2) general academic vocabulary used across disciplines (e.g., compare, analyze, evaluate); and (3) subject-specific words defined for use in the discipline.
Discourse
Includes the structures of written and oral language, as well as how students talk, write, and participate in knowledge construction in ways that are appropriate both to their development and to the discipline.
Syntax
The set of conventions for organizing symbols, words, and phrases together into structures (e.g., sentences, graphs, tables).
Language Supports
The scaffolds, representations, and pedagogical strategies teachers provide to help learners understand, use, and practice the concepts and language they need to learn within disciplines (Santos, Darling-Hammond, Cheuk, 2012).
Aligned
Consistently addressing the same/similar learning outcomes for students.
Analysis/Analyze:
Means to "break apart" and examine the pieces, trends, or patterns.
Analytical Writing
A type of writing used to review data or other evidence, with an explanation and interpretation of results supported by concrete evidence.
Approximation
Students are expected to try to accomplish tasks that are challenging while receiving encouragement.
Artifacts
Authentic work completed by you and your students, including lesson plans, copies of instructional and assessment materials, video clips of your teaching, and student work samples and self-reflections.
Assessment
Provide evidence of students' prior knowledge, thinking, or learning in order to evaluate what students understand and how they are thinking at a given point in time for the purpose of promoting student learning.
Personal Assets
Refers to specific background information that students bring to the learning environment. Students may bring interests, knowledge, mathematical dispositions, everyday experiences, family backgrounds, and so on, which a teacher can draw upon to support learning
Cultural Assets
Backgrounds and practices that students bring to the learning environment, such as traditions, languages and dialects, worldviews, literature, art, and so on, that a teacher can draw upon to support learning.
Community Assets
Refers to common backgrounds and experiences that students bring from where they live, such as resources, local landmarks, community events and practices, and so on, that a teacher can draw upon to support learning.
Central Focus
A brief description of the concept or goal that unifies the learning targets. A description of the important understandings and core concepts that you want students to develop within the learning segment - comes from the standard(s).
Conceptual Learning
Conceptual learning is a process by which students learn how to organize information in logical mental structures. Conceptual learning focuses on learning organizing principles - the cubby holes in which the mind organizes facts into ideas. Students demonstrate this in mathematics when they label, recognize, generate examples of concepts, know and apply facts, etc.
Close Reading
Is a careful and purposeful reading. It's rereading. It's an encounter with the text where students really focus on what the author had to say, what the author's purpose was, what the words mean, and what the structure of the text tells us.
Cloze Reading
Refers to the reading practice required when readers must fill blanks left in text, using whatever knowledge and experience they have.
Conceptual Understanding
Conceptual understanding is knowing more than isolated facts and methods. The successful student understands mathematical ideas, and has the ability to transfer their knowledge into new situations and apply it to new contexts. Knowledge about a topic/ the understanding of concepts, and recognizing their application in various situations/ learned through thoughtful, reflective mental activity, etc.
Descriptive Writing
A type of writing used to state, list, or provide details so the reader/scorer can visualize the features of an event, person, concept, or strategy (sets the scene).
Engaging Students in Learning
Using instructional and motivational strategies that promote students' active involvement in learning tasks that increase their knowledge, skills, and abilities related to specific learning target(s).
Evaluation Criteria
Performance indicators or dimensions that are used to assess evidence of student learning.
Evidence
Tangible proof that verifies an intended outcome.
Goals
These give direction, but are not measurable.
Integrative Connections
Focuses on standards in only one discipline.
Interdisciplinary Connections
Standards based unit that addresses and assesses standards from two or more disciplines.
Learning Environment
The designed physical and emotional context, established and maintained throughout the learning segment to support a positive and productive learning experience for students.
Learning Segment
A set of 3-5 lessons that build one upon another toward a central focus, with a clearly defined beginning and end.
Learning Target
Clearly indicates what students should know or be able to do as a result of the lesson. Helps students grasp the lesson's purpose--why it is crucial to learn this chunk of information, on this day, and in this way.
Learning Task
Purposefully designed activities in which students engage in learning—not just participate—to meet the lesson's learning target(s). It includes activities, discussions, or other modes of participation that engage students to develop, practice, and apply skills and knowledge related to a specific learning goal.
Lesson Plan
A plan for student learning. Three to five lesson plans comprise the learning segment within the edTPA.
Mathematical Reasoning
QQThe goal of emphasizing this in the teaching of mathematics is to empower students to reach conclusions and justify statements on their own rather than to rely solely on the authority of a teacher or textbook.
Quantitative Learning Patterns
These patterns indicate in a numerical way the information understood from the assessment (e.g., 10 out of 15 students; or 20% of the students).
Qualitative Learning Patterns
These patterns include descriptions of understandings, misunderstandings, and/or partial understandings that could explain the quantitative patterns (e.g., "given that most students were able to . . . it seems that they understand...").
Rapport
A close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups understand each other's feelings or ideas and communicate well with each other.
Representations
Manipulatives, models, tools, charts, and/or graphics that are used to deepen students' understanding of mathematics knowledge
Scaffolding
First introduced by Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976), the concept likens the process of building a concept or skill within a child to the kind of temporary structure that supports the construction of a house - Gradual Release of Responsibility to the Learner - As the learner becomes more responsible for his/her own learning and able to maintain a new skill. The teacher gives hints and prompts to support the learner and then gradually withdraws these supports, as the learner performs with increasing independence.
Schema
The knowledge and experience stored in your brain throughout your life that helps prepare you to understand new material.
Prerequisite Skills
These are skills that the learner must have BEFORE the lesson in order to be able to benefit from the lesson and meet the objective.
Requisite Skills
These are skills that students will practice and strengthen while learning.
Student Voice
Ongoing reflective self-assessment expressed in the words of the learner for the purpose of improving teaching and learning.
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