Assam TET LP key terms

An assessment approach that judges learning throughout the year rather than in one final test, covering both scholastic subjects and co-scholastic areas such as attitudes, values and skills. It uses varied tools like observation, projects and portfolios.

Assessment carried out during teaching to gather evidence about what learners understand, so instruction can be adjusted immediately. It is diagnostic and feedback-oriented, and results usually carry low or no weight in final grades.

Assessment conducted at the end of a unit, term or course to judge how much learning has been achieved. It typically produces a grade or mark and is used for reporting, promotion or certification rather than for immediate teaching decisions.

Using assessment evidence primarily to help learners improve, through clear goals, descriptive feedback and self-assessment. The learner is treated as an active partner in judging progress rather than only as a recipient of marks.

Information given to a learner that describes specifically what was done well and what needs improvement, with guidance on the next step. It focuses on the work and strategies rather than on the child's personality or ability.

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with help from a more capable person. Teaching is most effective when pitched inside this gap, with temporary support that is gradually withdrawn.

Temporary support a teacher or peer provides so a learner can complete a task just beyond independent ability. Supports include hints, models, prompts and worked steps, and they are removed as the learner gains competence.

A view of learning holding that learners actively build knowledge by connecting new experiences with what they already know, rather than passively receiving information. Teaching therefore begins from the child's existing ideas and provides hands-on, exploratory activity.

An organised mental framework a person uses to interpret new information and recall it later. Schemas grow and are revised with experience, and mismatches between a new experience and an existing schema can create learning difficulties.

Piaget's paired processes of cognitive adaptation. Assimilation fits new experience into an existing schema; accommodation changes the schema when it no longer fits. Balance between the two, called equilibration, drives cognitive development forward.

A sequence of four qualitative stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. Each stage has characteristic thinking limits, such as egocentrism or difficulty with abstraction, which should guide the choice of teaching activities.

The understanding that a quantity stays the same when its appearance is rearranged, for example water poured into a taller glass. Piaget found that preoperational children usually fail conservation tasks, while concrete operational children succeed.

Piaget's third stage, roughly ages seven to eleven, when children can reason logically about tangible objects and events but struggle with purely abstract or hypothetical problems. Classification, seriation and conservation become possible.

Gardner's proposal that intelligence is not a single general ability but a set of relatively independent capacities, such as linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. It supports offering varied entry points to a topic.

Planning instruction so that learners with differing readiness, interests and profiles can work towards the same goals through varied content, process or product. It is not giving some children less to learn but matching the route to their needs.

An arrangement in which children with disabilities and other marginalised groups learn in ordinary neighbourhood schools with appropriate support, rather than being segregated. It requires adapting curriculum, materials, assessment and classroom organisation to remove barriers.

A written plan for a learner with special educational needs, stating present levels of performance, specific goals, services and accommodations, and how progress will be reviewed. It is prepared collaboratively with parents and specialists.

A persistent difficulty in acquiring a specific academic skill, such as reading, writing or arithmetic, despite adequate intelligence, instruction and opportunity. It is not caused by sensory impairment, emotional disturbance or economic disadvantage.

A specific learning difficulty affecting accurate and fluent word reading and spelling, often with weak phonological awareness. It is unrelated to intelligence, and learners benefit from structured, multisensory phonics teaching and extra time in reading tasks.

The internal or external force that starts, directs and sustains goal-directed behaviour. Intrinsic motivation arises from interest and satisfaction in the activity; extrinsic motivation depends on rewards or pressure from outside.

In behaviourist theory, any consequence that increases the likelihood of a behaviour recurring. Positive reinforcement adds a pleasant stimulus, while negative reinforcement removes an unpleasant one; both strengthen behaviour, unlike punishment.

Skinner's account of learning in which behaviour is shaped by its consequences: reinforcement increases a response and punishment or extinction decreases it. Shaping, prompting and immediate feedback are practical classroom applications.

Pavlov's model in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after repeated pairing with a stimulus that already does so. It explains some emotional reactions, such as anxiety triggered by test-related cues.

The processes by which a learner selects some stimuli from the environment and organises them into meaningful patterns. Young children attend briefly and are easily distracted, so short activities, movement and clear visual contrast support learning.

The system that encodes, stores and retrieves information. Sensory memory holds impressions briefly, working memory manipulates a few items at a time, and long-term memory retains knowledge; rehearsal, chunking and meaningful organisation aid retention.

Chomsky's hypothetical innate capacity that enables children to learn language rapidly from limited exposure. It supports the nativist view that humans are biologically prepared for language, in contrast with behaviourist imitation-and-reinforcement accounts.

Chomsky's idea that all human languages share deep structural principles that children need not learn, only parameter settings being acquired from exposure. It is offered as an explanation for the ease and speed of first-language acquisition.

Acquisition is the natural, subconscious process of picking up a language through meaningful use, as in a mother tongue. Learning is the conscious, deliberate study of rules and forms, typically in a classroom.

An approach in which the goal of instruction is the ability to use language appropriately in real situations. Lessons emphasise interaction, information gaps, role play and meaningful tasks rather than isolated grammar drills.

Listening, speaking, reading and writing, conventionally grouped as receptive and productive skills. Listening and reading involve decoding meaning from input; speaking and writing involve producing it. They develop together and should be integrated in teaching.

The ability to notice and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language, including syllables, rhymes and individual phonemes. It is a strong predictor of early reading success and is developed through rhymes, clapping games and sound segmentation.

Teaching the correspondences between letters or letter groups and the sounds they represent, so learners can decode unfamiliar words. Systematic synthetic phonics begins with a small set of sounds and builds blending and segmenting from them.

Constructing meaning from a text by combining word recognition with background knowledge, vocabulary and inference. Skilled readers use strategies such as predicting, questioning, visualising and summarising before, during and after reading.

The use of two or more languages by an individual or community. In schooling it can be treated as a resource, with the home language used to build concepts and bridge to the school language, rather than as a deficit to be erased.

The principle that the value of a digit depends on its position in a numeral, each position representing a power of ten. Understanding it underpins reading and writing numbers, regrouping in addition and subtraction, and all written algorithms.

An intuitive grasp of quantities, their relative sizes and how operations affect them, enabling reasonable estimation and mental calculation. It develops through concrete counting, comparison and problem situations rather than memorised procedures alone.

A progression in mathematics teaching from handling real objects, to drawings or diagrams, to symbols and rules. It matches the way young children build understanding and prevents procedures from becoming meaningless memorisation.

Any physical object, such as counters, beads, sticks or blocks, that learners handle to model mathematical ideas. Manipulatives make abstract relationships visible and support explanation and reasoning when used with discussion.

Exchanging ten units of one place value for one unit of the next, or the reverse, when carrying out addition or subtraction. Also called borrowing and carrying, it should be taught with concrete materials before written notation.

Examining a learner's incorrect answers to identify the consistent rule or misconception producing them, rather than merely marking them wrong. Patterns of errors reveal what to reteach and are a core diagnostic teaching skill.

Instruction that begins by finding out precisely what a learner already knows and where understanding breaks down, then plans teaching to address those specific gaps. It relies on careful questioning, observation and error analysis.

An integrated primary subject combining science, social studies and health around the child's immediate surroundings. It uses observation, questioning, activity and local examples to help children understand themselves, their community and the natural world.

Core process skills in science learning: noticing features of objects or events and grouping them by shared criteria. Children practise these by sorting leaves, seeds or materials, which builds the basis for later scientific reasoning.

Material, person or place found in the learners' own environment that can be used for teaching, such as a pond, a market, a potter or a plant. Using local resources makes learning relevant and reduces dependence on costly equipment.