Aligning Learning With Learners Guide

ALL Guide Glossary of Terms

  1. ABILITY GROUPING: An instructional strategy whereby students of similar ability are placed together in a setting that offers curriculum and instruction geared to the abilities of the individuals comprising the group.
  2. ADVANCED LEARNERS: Students who appear to be able to work at a level ahead of where you and the curriculum guide expect them to be. This may subject-specific.
  3. ASSESSMENT: Techniques used to analyze student accomplishment against specific goals and criteria.
  4. BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE: Relevant information that students have prior to the beginning of a unit.
  5. CONTENT: Refers to what the teacher wants the student to learn and the materials or mechanisms through which that is accomplished (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 11).
  6. CULTURAL IDENTITY: The identification a person has with particular groups, such as race, social class, religion, and sexual orientation.
  7. CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE: "Culturally responsive classrooms specifically acknowledge the presence of culturally diverse students and the need for these students to find relevant connections among themselves and with the subject matter and the tasks teachers ask them to perform" (Montgomery, 2001, p. 4).
  8. CULTURE: "The shared values, traditions, norms, customs, arts, history, institutions, and experience of a group of people. The group may be identified by race, age, ethnicity, language, national origin, religion, or other social categories or groupings" (Bureau of Justice Assistance, n.d.).
  9. DEAFNESS: "A hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification, that adversely affects a child's educational performance" (U.S. Department of Education, 2005, p. 35836).
  10. DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION: Differentiated Instruction is a philosophy of teaching that recognizes the unique needs of students and takes responsibility for ensuring that all students receive appropriate learning opportunities and feedback appropriate to their individual needs.
  11. ENDURING UNDERSTANDING: Specific inferences and ideas that have lasting value beyond the classroom.
  12. FLEXIBLE GROUPING: Students consistently working in a variety of groups based on readiness, interest, and learning profile, and both homogeneous and heterogeneous in regard to those three elements (Tomlinson, 2003, p. 84).
  13. HEARING IMPAIRMENT: "An impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child's education performance but that is not included under the definition of deafness" (U.S. Department of Education, 2005, p. 35836).
  14. INTELLIGENCE PREFERENCE: The sorts of brain-based dispositions individuals have for learning.
  15. INTEREST: A student's affinity, curiosity, or passion for a particular topic or skill (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 11).
  16. LEARNING CONTRACTS: Learning contracts are an agreement between teachers and students of work that can be dome for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skill.
  17. LEARNING PROFILE: A summary relating how a student learns. Learning profiles take into consideration a person's intelligence preferences, gender, culture, learning style, etc. (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 11).
  18. LEARNING STYLE: The way a student accesses, processes, and expresses information most easily (Gregory & Chapman, 2002, p. 20).
  19. LEARNING TAXONOMY: Progressive categories of knowledge that can be used to guide instruction and assessment.
  20. MENTAL RETARDATION: "Significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptivebehavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child's educational performance" (U.S. Department of Education, 2005, p. 35836).
  21. ONGOING ASSESSMENT: When techniques used to analyze student accomplishment against specific goals and criteria are used on a continual basis to measure progress.
  22. PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT: A task that uses one's own knowledge and skills to develop a complex product that demonstrates mastery of specific health concepts and skills.
  23. PRE-ASSESSMENT: When techniques used to analyze student baseline knowledge and skill against specific goals and criteria are used prior to the beginning of a unit.
  24. PROCESS: The activities designed to ensure that students use key skills to make sense out of essential ideas and information (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 11). Refers to how a student makes sense of, or comes to understand, the information, ideas, and skills that are at the heart of a lesson (Tomlinson, 2003, p. 5).
  25. PRODUCT: The vehicles through which students demonstrate and extend what they have learned (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 11). Refers to assessments or demonstrations of what students have come to know, understand, and be able to do as the result of an extended sequence of learning (Tomlinson, 2003, p. 5).
  26. READINESS: A student's entry point relative to a particular understanding or skill (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 11).
  27. SCAFFOLDING: "Providing support needed for a student to succeed in challenging (slightly beyond the student?s comfort zone) work" (Tomlinson, 2001, p. 23).
  28. SCORING RUBRIC: A set of ordered categories to which a given piece of work can be compared. Scoring rubrics specify the qualities or processes that must be exhibited in order for a product to be assigned a particular evaluative rating.
  29. SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS/ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS (ELL): "A national-origin-minority student who is limited-English-proficient" (U.S. Department of Education - Office for Civil Rights. 2005. Glossary.
  30. SPECIFIC DISABILITY: "A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia" (U.S. Department of Education, 2005, p. 35836).
  31. VISUAL IMPAIRMENT: "Impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects a child's educational performance. This term includes both partial sight and blindness" (U.S. Department of Education, 2005, p.35837).