AP DSC key terms

A schooling approach where children with disabilities, different languages, or disadvantaged backgrounds learn in the same regular classroom, with the curriculum and teaching adapted to remove barriers rather than separating students.

Teaching that starts from the child's own interests, pace, and experience, using activity and discovery rather than teacher-dominated lecture, so that learning is constructed actively by the learner.

The view that learners build knowledge by connecting new information to what they already know, so the teacher's job is to create experiences and questions rather than simply transmit facts.

The gap between what a learner can do alone and what the learner can do with guidance from a more capable person; instruction is most effective when it targets this gap.

Temporary support such as hints, worked examples, or structured steps that a teacher provides so a learner can complete a task, gradually withdrawn as the learner gains competence.

An organised mental framework of prior knowledge that a learner uses to interpret new information; learning is easier when new material connects to an existing schema.

A sequence of four stages from sensorimotor through preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational, describing how children's reasoning shifts from sensory action to abstract logic.

The understanding that quantity, mass, or number stays the same despite changes in appearance or arrangement; typically mastered in the concrete operational stage and tested with water or clay tasks.

A three-level account of moral reasoning, moving from obedience and self-interest, through conformity to social norms, to principled reasoning based on universal ethical values.

Eight life stages, each posing a crisis such as trust versus mistrust or industry versus inferiority, whose resolution shapes personality; the school years centre on competence and peer approval.

Intrinsic motivation comes from interest or satisfaction in the task itself; extrinsic motivation comes from rewards or punishments outside it. Intrinsic motivation usually sustains learning longer.

A consequence that increases the likelihood of a behaviour recurring; positive reinforcement adds something pleasant, while negative reinforcement removes something unpleasant.

Skinner's principle that behaviour is shaped by its consequences: reinforced responses become more frequent and unreinforced or punished responses become less frequent.

A persistent difficulty in reading, writing, or mathematics that is not explained by low intelligence, sensory impairment, or poor schooling, and that requires specific teaching strategies.

A specific learning difficulty affecting accurate and fluent word reading and spelling, despite adequate intelligence and teaching; it often coexists with strengths in reasoning and oral expression.

Ongoing checks during teaching, such as questioning, quizzes, or observation, used to adjust instruction and give feedback rather than to assign final grades.

An assessment scheme that spreads evaluation across the year and covers scholastic and co-scholastic areas, using multiple tools instead of relying on a single terminal examination.

A written plan for a child with special needs that records present levels of performance, specific goals, required support, and review dates, prepared with parents and specialists.

Indian law making free and compulsory elementary education a fundamental right for children aged six to fourteen, setting norms for pupil-teacher ratio, infrastructure, and no-detention policy.

India's current education policy framework, introducing a 5+3+3+4 school structure, foundational literacy and numeracy goals, multidisciplinary higher education, and emphasis on mother-tongue instruction in early years.

The NEP 2020 priority that every child by Grade 3 reads with comprehension and performs basic arithmetic; it underpins later learning and is tracked through national and state surveys.

Specific, observable statements of what learners should know or be able to do at the end of a unit or stage, used to plan teaching and to judge whether it succeeded.

Designing a lesson so that the stated learning outcomes, the teaching activities, and the assessment tasks all match one another, avoiding tests that measure something never taught.

Applying knowledge or skills learned in one situation to a new and different problem, which is stronger when the original learning was understood rather than memorised.

The ability to use two languages for communication, which can support learning when the home language is used as a bridge to the school language rather than suppressed.

Using the child's home language for early instruction so that concepts are built in a familiar code before a second language becomes the main medium of learning.

Alternating between two languages within a conversation or lesson, often used by teachers to explain a difficult idea and by learners to participate before full fluency develops.

The ability to notice and manipulate the sounds of spoken language, such as syllables, rhymes, and individual phonemes, which is a strong predictor of later reading success.

Teaching reading by linking letters and letter groups to the sounds they represent, so learners can decode unfamiliar printed words systematically rather than by sight memory alone.

Reading text accurately, at a reasonable pace, and with appropriate expression, which frees attention for comprehension instead of word-by-word decoding.

Constructing meaning from text by connecting it to prior knowledge, inferring unstated ideas, and monitoring one's own understanding while reading.

A language teaching approach that organises lessons around real communication and meaningful tasks rather than isolated grammar drills, with fluency developed alongside accuracy.

A method where learners use the target language to complete a meaningful task, such as planning a trip or solving a problem, and language focus follows the task.

The Telugu and Sanskrit grammatical process by which the final sound of one word changes or blends with the initial sound of the next when they join, producing a single combined form.

A compound word in Telugu and Sanskrit formed by joining two or more words into one unit, with named types such as tatpurusha, dvandva, and bahuvrihi determining meaning.

The value a digit carries because of its position in a numeral, so that in 4,706 the 7 means seven hundreds; it underpins regrouping in addition and subtraction.

Renaming units across place values, such as exchanging one ten for ten ones, to carry out addition and subtraction algorithms accurately.

A visual model showing numbers as equally spaced points on a line, used to build understanding of order, addition, subtraction, fractions, and negative numbers.

A teaching progression that begins with physical objects, moves to drawings and diagrams, and only then to symbols and rules, so abstract procedures rest on understood models.

A disciplined cycle of observing, forming a testable hypothesis, controlled experiment, data collection, and conclusion, with findings open to replication and revision.

A clear, testable prediction about the relationship between variables, stated before data collection so that evidence can support or refute it.

A factor deliberately kept constant across experimental trials so that any observed change can be attributed to the variable being tested rather than to unrelated differences.

Teaching through hands-on tasks, experiments, and group projects so that learners encounter concepts through doing, then generalise from their observations.

Primary sources are first-hand records such as inscriptions, coins, and letters; secondary sources interpret them, such as textbooks and later histories.

Arranging events in the order they occurred and using dates, periods, and timelines to show sequence and cause-effect relationships in history.

Explaining the past by weighing evidence and recognising that historians select and read sources from particular viewpoints, so accounts of one event can differ.

Imaginary grid lines that locate places: latitude measures distance north or south of the equator, longitude measures distance east or west of the prime meridian.

A seasonal reversal of wind direction that brings heavy rainfall to India when moist winds blow from the sea, and dry conditions when they blow from land.