PEACE

25 Important Terms Every Teaching Student Should Know

There are many teaching terms that you will inevitably have to learn as you enter a professional education career. It is important to get a feel for the teaching lingo whether you are a prospective educator or a parent who will be interacting with teachers. The following are the 25 most important terms every teaching student should know:

1. Alternative Assessment: Requires performing a task rather than multiple or fill-in-the-blank.

2. Assessment: Studying or judging what the child knows and doesn't know.

3. Authentic Assessment: Requires performing a task to demonstrate knowledge or competence.

4. Balanced Reading: Combining intense phonics and whole language instruction.

5. Collaborative Education: Students cooperate on group projects for a common grade.

6. Direct Instruction: Intensive small group instruction using a set of prescriptive materials.

7. Enrichment: Often provided for gifted students.

8. Fine Motor Skills: Require using smallest muscles for very slight controlled movements.

9. Gross Motor Skills: Require using largest muscles for grand motions like walking or running.

10. High Stakes Tests: Testing students at specific grade levels to see if they're meeting standards.

11. IQ: A measure of an individual's ability to learn.

12. Inference: To draw a conclusion from the information presented.

13. Learning Styles: Everyone has different learning styles, including tactile, auditory and visual.

14. Mainstreaming: Special needs kids join the rest of the students for lunch, assemblies and some classes.

15. Norm-Referenced Tests: Produce scores to compare children at similar ages and grade levels.

16. Open-ended Activities: Where there is no correct answer, or many ways to find the answer.

17. Phonics: Learning to read by sounding out words.

18. Portfolio Assessment: Assessing a collection of activities or projects over a period of time.

19. Professional Development: Classes, seminars or workshops towards teacher recertification.

20. Remediation: Re-teaching skills that the child did not master during regular classroom instruction.

21. Rubric: Instrument used to grade alternative or performance assessments.

22. Special Education: Classes for giftedness, speech, language, deaf education and various disabilities.

23. Standardized Tests: Tests given across a district, state or nation.

24. Visual Discrimination: Ability of the eye to see letter differences.

25. Whole Language: Immersion in the printed word to help children interpret the printed word like they do the spoken word.