GTLE Pedagogy Primary flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Zone of proximal development

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a learner can do independently and what they can do with adult or peer guidance. Scaffolding works only inside this gap.

Concrete operational stage

Piaget's stage from roughly seven to eleven years, marked by conservation, classification, seriation and reversibility. Reasoning remains tied to concrete objects rather than abstract hypotheses.

Industry versus inferiority

Erikson's psychosocial stage for roughly six to twelve years. Success in tasks builds competence; repeated failure or ridicule can produce lasting feelings of inadequacy.

Working memory limit

Primary learners hold roughly three to five chunks of information at once. Presenting too many new elements simultaneously overloads memory and produces off-task behaviour.

Bronfenbrenner's ecological model

Nested systems around the child: microsystem (family, class), mesosystem (links between them), exosystem (parent workplace), macrosystem (culture, policy) and chronosystem (time).

Backward design

Wiggins and McTighe's planning sequence: identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, then design learning experiences. Assessment is planned before activities.

Learning objective components

A well-formed objective states an observable action, the conditions of performance and a criterion for success, written from the learner's perspective rather than the teacher's.

Bloom's revised taxonomy

Cognitive demand ordered as remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate, create. Primary lessons should reach at least apply and analyse, not stop at recall.

Scheme of work

A medium-term plan mapping syllabus content across terms and weeks. It differs from a syllabus (whole course) and a lesson plan (single lesson).

Gradual release of responsibility

Instructional sequence moving from teacher modelling to guided practice to collaborative work to independent work. Omitting the guided stage raises learner error rates.

Withitness and overlapping

Kounin's descriptors of a teacher who notices misbehaviour early and manages multiple events at once. These reduce disruption more than punitive responses do.

Wait time

A pause of three to five seconds after asking a question. It increases response length and the number of volunteers; cold calling without it suppresses participation.

Positive acknowledgement ratio

Aim for at least four specific positive acknowledgements for every correction. Name the behaviour or effort; general praise such as 'good job' is weaker.

Cooperative learning requirements

Group work needs individual accountability and positive interdependence. Without them, one learner completes the task while others disengage and learn little.

Simple view of reading

Reading comprehension equals decoding multiplied by language comprehension. A weakness in either factor limits overall comprehension, so diagnosis must check both.

Systematic synthetic phonics

Teaching letter–sound correspondences in a defined sequence and blending them to read words. It outperforms whole-word and analytic approaches for early decoding.

Five components of reading

Phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Fluency is often benchmarked at roughly ninety to one hundred correct words per minute in lower primary.

Concrete–pictorial–abstract sequence

Mathematics teaching moves from manipulatives to diagrams and number lines to symbols. Skipping the concrete stage commonly produces procedural-only learning without understanding.

Miscue analysis

Classifying reading errors as meaning, structure or visual. The resulting pattern indicates whether to target decoding, vocabulary or comprehension in subsequent teaching.

Formative versus summative assessment

Formative assessment adjusts teaching during learning; summative assessment measures achievement at the end. The same task can serve either purpose depending on use.

Validity versus reliability

Validity is whether an assessment measures what it claims; reliability is whether it gives consistent results. A reliable test can still be invalid.

Criterion-referenced assessment

Performance is compared to a defined standard rather than to other learners. Primary classrooms usually need this information more than norm-referenced comparisons.

Effective feedback questions

Feedback answers where the learner is going, how they are going, and where to next. It must be specific, timely and actionable; grades alone do not improve learning.

Hinge question

A carefully designed question asked mid-lesson to check whether the class is ready to move on. Responses determine whether to reteach or proceed.

Social model of disability

Barriers are located in the environment and attitudes rather than in the learner. Inclusive practice follows this model; the medical model locates the problem in the individual.

Universal design for learning

Planning multiple means of representation, engagement and expression from the start. It reduces the need to retrofit individual adjustments after learners struggle.

EAL is not SEN

English as an additional language is not a special educational need. A learner may need language support while being cognitively able; assessment must not confuse the two.

Reasonable adjustments

Changes such as modified materials, extra time, oral instead of written responses, seating changes and assistive technology that remove barriers without lowering expectations.

Duty of care

The obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm, covering supervision ratios, risk assessments for trips and safe handling of medication.

Safeguarding reporting rule

Report any concern about abuse or neglect immediately to the designated safeguarding lead. Do not investigate, promise confidentiality, or confront the family yourself.

Epstein's six involvement types

Parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making, and collaborating with the community. Each is a distinct channel for school–family partnership.

Lesson study

Teachers jointly plan a research lesson, one teaches while others observe, then the team debriefs and revises. The focus is learner thinking, not teacher performance.