APTET Paper 1 key terms

The distance between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with guidance from a teacher or a more able peer. Instruction pitched inside this zone stretches learning without causing frustration.

Temporary, graded support a teacher gives while a learner attempts a new task, such as hints, worked models or prompts. The support is gradually withdrawn as the child becomes independent.

Piaget's term for understanding that amount, number, mass or volume stays the same when only the arrangement or appearance changes. Pre-operational children usually lack it; concrete-operational children usually have it.

Piaget's label for a young child's difficulty in taking another person's viewpoint. The child assumes that others see, know and feel exactly as they do, which shapes early speech and play.

Schooling in which children with disabilities, different home languages or disadvantaged backgrounds learn in the same regular classroom, with the curriculum, materials and environment adjusted so that every child can participate.

An evaluation approach that assesses learners throughout the year using several tools and covers scholastic as well as co-scholastic areas such as attitudes, values, health and life skills.

Assessment carried out during teaching to gather evidence about learning, give descriptive feedback and adjust the next lesson. It is low-stakes and diagnostic rather than used for grading or ranking children.

A persistent difficulty in one specific academic skill, such as reading, writing or arithmetic, in a child of average intelligence with adequate schooling, and not caused by sensory, motor or emotional impairment.

Gardner's theory that intelligence is not a single score but a set of relatively independent abilities, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic intelligences.

Vygotsky's view that knowledge is built through social interaction, dialogue and cultural tools such as language, so peer collaboration and teacher mediation drive cognitive development rather than isolated discovery.

Skinner's principle that behaviour is strengthened or weakened by its consequences: reinforcement increases a response, punishment decreases it, and schedules of reinforcement shape how persistent the behaviour becomes.

The drive to engage in an activity because it is interesting, enjoyable or personally satisfying, rather than for rewards, grades or fear of punishment. It sustains effort and self-directed learning.

The ability to notice and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, for example blending /c/-/a/-/t/ or naming the first sound of 'sun'. It is a foundation for phonics and spelling.

Teaching the relationship between letters or letter groups and their sounds so that beginners can decode unfamiliar printed words. It differs from whole-word recognition and supports early reading and spelling.

Reading quickly to get the general idea or gist of a text, for example glancing through a passage before answering a question about its main theme. Details are deliberately ignored.

Reading rapidly to locate specific information such as a date, a name or a figure without reading every word. The eyes move over the text searching for the target.

An approach that organises language lessons around real purposes and interaction, so learners use the target language in pair work, role play and tasks rather than only memorising grammar rules.

The view that a child's home language and other languages are assets in the classroom, used to build concepts and bridge to the school language, rather than deficits to be erased.

Alternating between two or more languages within a conversation or lesson, often to clarify meaning, manage the class or help learners connect new ideas with familiar ones.

The natural, largely subconscious process by which a child picks up a language through exposure and interaction, in contrast with the conscious, rule-based study of a language in formal settings.

Understanding a text by using prior knowledge, expectations and context to predict meaning, starting from the whole text and moving towards words, as opposed to decoding letter by letter.

A classroom containing labelled objects, charts, big books, word walls and children's writing displayed at eye level, giving learners constant and meaningful encounters with written language.

Expressions whose meaning is not literal, such as similes, metaphors, personification and idioms. Recognising them helps learners interpret poetry, stories and everyday speech.

Conveying what someone said without quoting the exact words, with tense, pronouns and time words adjusted, for example 'She said she was tired.' It is tested through transformation exercises.

The value a digit has because of its position in a numeral; in 4,582 the 5 stands for five hundreds. Understanding it underpins reading, writing, comparing and calculating with numbers.

A teaching progression that introduces a mathematical idea first with real objects, then with pictures or diagrams, and finally with symbols and abstract rules, so that understanding precedes formal procedure.

Any physical object such as counters, beads, fraction strips or geometric solids that learners handle to build mathematical ideas. It makes abstract relationships visible and supports reasoning before written algorithms.

A problem-solving framework: understand the problem, devise a plan, carry out the plan, and look back to check and generalise. It gives learners a structured approach to word problems.

A line marked with evenly spaced numbers used to show order, compare quantities and model addition, subtraction, jump counting and later fractions and negative numbers.

A number that expresses part of a whole or part of a set, written as a numerator over a denominator. Understanding it requires equal parts and unitising.

The systematic study of learners' wrong answers to identify the misconception or faulty rule behind them, so that teaching targets the cause rather than merely correcting the final answer.

The sequence in which living things transfer energy by eating and being eaten, from producers such as plants to herbivores and then carnivores. Several chains interlink as a food web.

A feature or behaviour that helps a plant or animal survive and reproduce in its particular surroundings, such as thick fur in cold regions or roots that store water.

The natural place where an organism lives and finds the food, water, shelter and conditions it needs, such as a pond, forest or desert.

The continuous movement of water between the earth and the atmosphere through evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection, driven by the sun's heat.

A natural resource that is replenished by natural processes within a human lifetime, such as sunlight, wind, water and biomass, unlike coal or petroleum, which are exhaustible.

Food that supplies carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, fibre and water in the right proportions for a person's age and activity, supporting growth, energy and immunity.

An approach in which children investigate their surroundings through questions, observation, simple experiments, field visits and discussion, building concepts from evidence instead of memorising facts.