Louisiana PLT Practice

Spiral Curriculum

By Bruner, exposes students to a topic or theme several times with increasing complexity and in context to existing experiences. (Students learn ability changes overtime.)

Constructivist Teaching

Students build upon prior knowledge to construct new meaning. Encourages students to take ownership in learning. The teacher is to facilitate interactive discovery learning and avoid direct instruction or passive learning.

Inquiry-Based Learning

A form of active learning that starts by posing questions, problems, or scenarios rather than simply presenting established facts or portraying a smooth path to knowledge. The process is often assisted by a facilitator. Inquirers will identify and research issues and questions to develop their knowledge or solutions.

Indirect Instruction

Based on student-led activities where the teacher is the facilitator.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Enables teachers and learners to make connections across learning through exploring clear and relevant links across the curriculum. It supports the use and application of what has been taught and learning in new and different ways. It provides opportunities for deepening learning, for example through answering big questions, exploring an issue, solving problems, or completing a final project.

Divergent Thinking

The thought process or methods used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions.

Bloom’s Three Domains of Learning

Cognitive (Mental Skills, Knowledge), Affective (Growth in feelings or emotional areas, attitude or self), Psychomotor (Manual or physical skills)

Interdisciplinary Instructions

Synthesizes more than one discipline and relies on teams of teachers.

Vicarious Learning

Learning that is derived from indirect sources such as hearing or observation, rather than direct, hands-on instruction.

Modification

Changes what they learn.

Accommodation

Changes how they learn.

Envornmental Accommodation

Helps enable students with social, behavioral, emotional, and/or educational needs to cope with the demands of the environment while learning new skills. (Moving a student near a teacher or a positive role model.)

Instructional Accommodation

Adjustment in teaching strategies, environment, or the assessment to content to allow students to learn at the same level as the other students. (Increasing font size)

Social Development Theory

By Vygotsky, social interaction plays a fundamental roles in cognitive development. Interaction with a more knowledgeable other directly affects learning.

Social Learning Theory

Stresses the concepts of modeling and preforming to teach others, people learn through observation.

Cognitive Theory

By Jean Piaget, the sensorimotor stage, the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. Children move through the stages at different rates, therefore, teachers must make a special effort to develop activities and assessments with each individual child in mind.

Anecdotal Notes

A form of ongoing assessment that are valuable for documenting and describing specific aspects of a student learning and their behavior. (Helpful when speaking to parents.)

Anchor Chart

Records student’s thoughts, responses, and impressions about an aspect of text so that the students can refer to the information in the future.

Academic Journal

A periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and discussion of research. They are usually peer-reviewed or refereed.

KWL Chart

A graphic organizer that encourages students to consider what they know and what they want to learn about a topic before studying it, and then record what they learned at the end of the lesson.

Developmental Portfolio

Tracks the advancement of student skills over a period of time, builds both self-evaluative and reflective skills.

Holistic Scoring

Used to give a single, overall score for an assignment as a while, a rubric is used.

Analytic Scoring

Requires teachers to provide a score for each attribute of a project.

Raw Score

An original datum that has not been transformed.

Mean Score

The average score.

Percentile Rank

Refers to the students ranking in comparison to students who took the same assessment.

Developmental Scoring

Allows the comparison of student academic progress over time in a particular subject by linking assessments at adjacent grades together.

Probing

Having a student go deeper in explaining their thinking.

Evaluative Questions

Questions that require a response based on their opinion.

Convergent Questions

Questions that have one correct answer.

Divergent Questions

Questions with no specific answer, but rather exercise one’s ability to think broadly about a certain topic.

Factual Questions

Questions that require fact-based answers. There is only one correct answer, which can be verified by referring to the test or other learning materials.

Self Motivation

Ability to complete a task without prodding pr direction because the task is deemed interesting or benefical.

Self-Efficacy

The belief in one’s ability to produce desired results by their own actinos.

Classical Conditioning

A learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired, a response which is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone.

Operant Conditioning

By Skinner, a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior.

Informal Assessments

Occurs constantly throughout instruction to provide feedback on students’ work, not used for grading purposes.

Norm Reference Test

A test that is used to determine a need for academic support, helps ascertain whether a student has mastered a skill at graduating level. (A multiple choice test that evaluates basic mathematics skills for the purpose of determining the student’s need for academic support.)

Criterion Referenced Test

A test that is used to determine whether a student has obtained expected knowledge and whether there are gaps in learning or not. (A mathematics test provided by the district twice each year that determines student mastery of state performance standards or a pretest and post test.)

Summative Assessment

Should be given after instruction has been completed to determine effectiveness.

Diagnostic Assessment

Allows a teacher to determine a students’ individual strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, and skills prior to instruction. It is primarily used to diagnose student difficulties and to guide lesson and curriculum planning.

Aptitude Assessment

Alternative or authentic assessment, is a form of testing that requires students to perform a task.

Informal Reading Inventory

Assessment tool that assists in determining a student’s reading strengths and weaknesses. Most effective for the initial placement of students because it can be administered in a short amount of time, yields immediate results, and generally accurate.

Sensory Memory

The shortest-term element of memory. It is the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimuli have ended.

Working Memory

Temporarily stores, organizes, and allows expression of information.

Long-term Memory

Phase or type of memory responsible for the storage of information for an extended period of time.

Procedural Memory

A part of the long-term memory that is responsible for knowing how to do things, also known as motor skills.

Cognitive Dissonance

The states of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

Section 504

A part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 the prohibits discrimination based upon disability. It is an anti-discrimination, civil rights statue that requires the needs of students with disabilites to be met as adequately as the needs of the non-disabled are met.

Americans With Disabilities Act

A 1990 civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

A four-part piece of American legislation that ensures students with a disability are provided with Free Appropriate Public Education that is tailored to their individual needs. It was previously know as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act.

Free and Appropriate Education

An educational right of all children in the U.S. that is guaranteed by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act

An extensive statue that funded primary and secondary education.

Equal Opportunity

Prohibits discrimination against faculty staff, and students, including racial segregation of students, and requires school districts to take actions to overcomes barriers to students’ equal participation.

Intellectual Freedom

The right to seek and reveive information from all points of view without restriction.

Intellectual Property

Creations of the mind, such as literary and artistic works. The right pf int. prop. is protected by property laws and limit the reproduction of works without the creator’s permission.

Erikson

Theorized the Stages of Psychosocial Development, students are given assignments on the basis of their ability levels and provided with frequent opportunities for success.

Maslow

He established that students must feel emotionally and physically safe before they are able to learn.

Watson

Students are given a reward for positive behavior and academic success and a consequence for negative behavior and lack of academic progress.

Thorndike

Students are assessed and encouraged to work at their own pace as they are introduced to new information one step at a time.

Bruner

Theorized constructivism, scaffolding, and spiral curriculum.

Piaget

Theorized cognitive development.

Dewey

Theorized progressive education, child-centered learning, and interdiscipline.

Bandura

Theorized behavior models and that children learn through observation and imitation.

Skinner

Theorized that learning means changing behaviorsl

Vygotsky

Theorized sociocultural perspective and social learning theory.

Kohlberg

Theorized moral development.

Pre-intellectual Stage

Crying as means of communication.

Autonomous Stage

invented words

Naiive Stage

Using adult words and developing connections.

Communicative Stage

for others

Egocentric Stage

For self, eventually becomes mental.

Pre-conventional Stage

Stage 1: Try to avoid punishment, Stage 2: Self-Interest

Conventional Stage

Stage 3: Want to be liked by others, Stage 4: want to follow ‘laws’/rules

Post-Conventional Stage

Stage 5: achieve the most good for the most people, Stage 6: ethical and ‘right’

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level 1

Remembering - able to recall, define, or recite.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level 2

Understanding - explain, translate, or summarize.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level 3

Applying - demonstrate, operate, or relate the same information in different scenarios.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level 4

Analyzing - categorize, compare, and contrast ideas and information.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level 5

Evaluating - judge, criticize, or prioritize aspects of the concept.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level 6

Creating - imagine, modify, or invent something from the information.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

The theory that children actively construct their understanding of the world through exploration and experience. This theory outlines four distinct stages.

Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years Old)

When infants learn through sensory experiences and motor actions. They develop object permanence, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight.

Pre-operational Stage (2 Years Old to 7 Years Old)

When children begin to use symbols and language but struggle with logical reasoning. They are egocentric, meaning they have difficulty seeing things from another person’s perspective.

Concrete Operational Stage (7 Years Old to 11 Years Old)

When children develop logical thinking skills but still struggles with abstract concepts. They can understand conversations, the idea that the amount of something stays the same even if its appearance changes.

Formal Operational Stage (12 Years Old +)

Adolescents develop abstract thinking skills and can engage in hypothetical reasoning. They can think about possibilities and solve problems systematically.

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

The theory that learning is a social process and that children’s cognitive development is shaped by their interactions with more knowledgeable others, such as parents, teachers, and peers.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The gap between what a learner can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance and support.

Cultural Tools

Language, symbols, and artifacts surrounding cultural backgrounds that help to shape cognitive development.

Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development

The theory that focused on the social and emotional aspects of human development.

Trust vs. Mistrust (Birth to 1 Years Old)

When infants learn to trust their caregivers to meet their needs. If caregivers are responsive and consistent, infants develop a sense of trust. If caregivers are neglectful or inconsistent, infants may develop a sense of mistrust.

Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt (2 Years Old to 3 Years Old)

When toddlers begin to assert their independence and explore their environment. If they are given opportunities to make choices and explore, they develop a sense of autonomy. If they are overly controlled or criticized, they may develop a sense of shame and doubt.