PPR Exam Flashcards
Ability Grouping
A type of grouping where students are placed together according to their skill level, in high, middle or low groups. The TExES exam does not like this practice as research indicates that it is not very effective and has some negative consequences.
Abstract
Characterized only in thought; non-concrete. Considered apart from concrete existence.Not applied or practical; theoretical.
Active Engagement
Student are actively participating in an activity in a meaningful, hands-on way. This type of activity is more likely to help students to understand and remember the concept or lesson.
Active Listening
Paying close attention to what is currently being said. Often the listener is silently making mental notes and focusing on not just the content, but also any emotional content, as well, and connecting what is being said to prior knowledge and experience.
Age Appropriate
Instructional lessons, activities, etc, that fit the development, language and ability level of the child. This is not necessarily the same thing as developmentally appropriate, since a child’s developmental level may not be the same as his/her age level.
Alternative Assessment
A type of evaluation other than a conventional test. It is sometimes used with students who cannot take a conventional test for some reason or for whom a conventional test is not an accurate assessment of their knowledge or ability.
Analysis
Taking knowledge apart to understand how it fits together. It is one of the higher order thinking skills.
Application
Applying or using what is known to solve an actual problem.
Admission, Review, and Dismissal (ARD) Committee
In Texas a team that determines a student’s eligibility for special education services, reviews the eligibility on a regular basis, and determines an appropriate individual education plan for the student.
Assessment
A way of monitoring progress; the act of testing, determining an evaluation of a particular skill or content area; includes many different approaches and formats, formal, informal and authentic evaluation procedures.
Assimilation (Piaget)
According to Piaget this is the process of fitting new ideas or concepts into existing ideas or concepts. It suggests that a child may change or alter what he perceives in the outside world in order to fit his internal world.
Authentic Assessment
Using evaluations procedures that measure exactly what learning has occurred. It literally means “real” and usually consists of a product that the student produces to demonstrate knowledge or mastery of a skill.
Autonomy
The process of becoming independent and regulating one’s own behavior.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Proposed by Benjamin Bloom this is a classification tool developed to categorize learning from low level thinking to very high level thinking.
Comprehension
Understanding and knowledge something, whether it is a concept, content information, behavior, etc. It is often used in relation to reading (reading comprehension) to indicate that a reader remembers and understands what was read. But, it is not limited exclusively to reading.
Constructivism
An instructional approach based on the theory on the idea that children build understanding by an active learning process. Students build their own learning and knowledge by exploration, discovery and questioning.
Content Validity
How well a test measures what is was designed to measure.
Convergent Thinking
Involves combining or joining different ideas together Based on elements these ideas have in common. In short, it means putting the different pieces of a topic back together in some organized, structured and understandable fashion. Convergent thinking, then, is an essential part of the outlining and organizing process.
Deductive Reasoning
The process of thinking from general terms to specific terms; framing thinks so as to eliminate ideas or possibilities one by one.
English as a Second Language (ESL)
A program for teaching the English language to children whose first language is not English, although in practice it is much more comprehensive than this and includes the teaching of academic content to students with limited English proficiency. It involves effective instructional strategies for teaching English to non-native speakers.
Ethical Behavior
Acting in the highest moral principles and values. For educators in Texas it means behavior and practices that conform to the Texas Educators’ Code of Ethics.
Evaluation
Critical thinking that involves making and supporting judgments. This is one of the higher order thinking skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Extrinsic Motivation
Wanting to do something, behaving in a certain way or achieving something because of some type of external reward. The reward could be something tangible, i.e. money, food, etc. or it could be intangible, i.e. praise, better grade, etc.
Formal Assessment
Measuring knowledge or skill acquistion by means of a standardized test, very often using a commercially published test, although it doesn’t have to be commercially published to be formal, but it would need to be standardized.
Formative Assessment
Monitoring progress before and during learning in order to guide any necessary adjustments and the pace of learning. Formative assessment gives teh teacher inforamtion regarding how well students are understanding a particular concept or skill in order to determine the effectiveness of the instruction. It is done on an ongoing basis during instruction.
Graphic Organizers
A type of visual displaly, chart, graphic, etc. that helps students with planning, organizing, connecting, engaging and evaluating their larning. They are tools that assist teachers and students in the learning process. They take many forms, venn diagrams, semantic maps, timelines, KWL charts, story maps, outlines, etc.
Grouping
Placing students together in order to for a lesson or other learning or instructional activity. Groupins is sometimes done on the basis of a single student characteristic, such as ability or ethnicity and when done on that basis it is not very effective or desirable.
Hands-On Activities
Activities designed so that they require students to get actively engaged in the learning activity in a physical way.
Higher Order Questions
Questions that engage the child in more complex cogniive skills. It is usually used to refer to thinking process that are more sophisticated and on the upper level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Instructional Objectives
Specific and usually, but not always, written statements regardng the exact goals or desired student outcomes for a lesson or other learning activitiy. In other words, what the teacher hopes or expects to accomplish with the lesson.
Instructional Strategy
A plan, tool, technique or approach for teaching. the mehtodology and process the teacher uses to help students understand and learn the instructional objectives.
Accommodation
In the theories of Jean Piaget: the modification of internal representations in order to accommodate a changing knowledge of reality. It refers to an important aspect of learning for young children, as they alter and adjust existing schemas, or ideas, as a result of new information or new experiences.
Accountability
Holding schools responsible for what students learn. It is an important concept behind the high stakes testing movement in schools.
Acculturation
The adoption of the behavior patterns of the surrounding culture.
Assimilation
Process of changing one’s own culture to the dominant cultural norms.
Advanced Organizers
A framework for understanding the material to be taught, which is introduced prior to the lesson. They help orient students to the lesson by helping them to connect the new knowledge to prio knowledge and to create an understanding of how the new knowledge fits it with existing knowledge.
Affective Domain
Attitudinal and emotional areas of learning, such as values and feelings.
Affective Objectives
Learning objectives that focus on values, feeling, beliefs and emotions.
Aptitude Test
A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.
Assertive Discipline
Classroom management approach (Leo Canter)
based on establishing clear limits and
expectations, insisting on acceptable
student behavior and delivering appropriate
consequences when rules are broken.
At-Risk Students
A term used to refer to children who are not currently identified as handicapped or disabled but who are considered to have greater than usual chance of school success due to any number of factors such as environment, prior instruction, motivation, etc.
Behavior Disorder
Problem when behavior deviates so much from appropriate behaviors for the child’s age group that it significantly interferes with child leanring, growth and development.
Behavior Objective
A form for writing an instructional objective that emphasizes precision and careful delineation of expected student behaviors, the testing situation and the desired performance criterion.
Bottom-Up Processing
Starting with skills and moving to whole knowledge, starting with parts and working toward the whole. An example is learning sounds, then words, then sentences, etc.
Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education
A landmark decision of the United States Supreme court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students and denying black children equal educational opportunities unconstitutional.
Bilingual Education
Second language instruction in which students are instructed in academic subject areas in their native language while simultaneously being taught to speak and write in the second language.
Brainstorming
An uncritical, non-evaluative process of generating associated ideas. The focus on brainstorming is the quantity of ideas and not necessarily their quality, as a starting point to examining and analyzing ideas.
Jerome Bruner
Discovery learning and constructivism. He wrote that the aim of education should be to create autonomous learners. He proposed three modes of representation: Enactive representation (action-based); Iconic representation (image-based); and Symbolic representation (language-based).
Chapter 1- Educational Improvement Act
The purpose of this federal law is to provide financial assistance to State and local educational agencies to meet the special educational needs of educationally deprived children. It is recognized, generally, as the funding source for rememdial math and reading programs in school.
Classical Conditioning
Conditioning that pairs a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that evokes a reflex (first identified by Pavlov). For instance, dogs learn to associate a bell with feeding time, so when they hear the bell they immediately start to salivate becasue they have been conditioned to do so.
Classroom Management
Techniques used to maintain a healthy learning environment, relatively free of behavior problems.
Cognitive Domain
As described by Benjamin Bloom, this part of the brain that includes content knowledge and the development of intellectual skills. This includes the recall or recognition of specific facts and concepts that serve developing intellectual abilities and skills. There are six major categories, starting from the simplest behavior (recalling facts) to the most complex (Evaluation).
Compensatory Education
Programs designed to prevent or remediate learning problems among students from lower socioeconomic status communities. In other words, to compensate for factors that have prevented the students from learning and achieving succes in school.
Competency Based Teacher Education
The general process by which the state provides a credential to an individual. Certification is based on the individual demonstrating and documenting achievment and success on specific criterial or competencies.
Conservation
The concept or understandign (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects. According to Piaget, young children do not have this concept until the moved out of the concrete operational stage of development.
Cooperative Learning
Approach to instruction in which students work with a small group of peers to achieve a common goal and help one another learn.
Core Curriculum
Acommon course of study for all students often called for by essentialist reforms in the 1980’s.
Criterion Referenced Test
A test that describes the specific types of skills, tasks, or knowledge of an individual relative to a well-defined mastery criterion. The content of criterion-referenced tests is limited to certain specified objectives. The student’s perforamnce on this type of test helps the teacher to determine the specific criteria or skills on which the student needs help.
Critical Thinking
The intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.
