REET Level 1 key terms

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a learner can already do alone and what the same learner can achieve with guidance from a teacher or a more capable peer. Instruction is most effective inside this zone.

Temporary support a teacher or peer provides - hints, models, prompts, worked steps - so a child can complete a task slightly beyond independent reach. The support is gradually withdrawn as the learner becomes competent.

Piaget's third stage of cognitive development, roughly ages seven to eleven, when children reason logically about concrete objects and events but still struggle with abstract, hypothetical or purely verbal problems.

The understanding that amount, mass, volume or number stays the same even when appearance or arrangement changes - for example, water poured into a taller glass. Normally achieved during the concrete operational stage.

Piaget's label for a young child's difficulty in seeing a situation from another person's point of view. It weakens as the child moves from preoperational into concrete operational thinking.

Schooling in which curriculum, physical access and teaching are adapted so that every child - including those with disabilities, home-language differences or economic disadvantage - learns in the same regular classroom.

A written plan prepared for an individual learner with special needs, recording current levels of functioning, specific goals, accommodations and dates for review, drawn up with parents and specialists.

A persistent, specific difficulty in reading, writing or mathematics that occurs despite average intelligence and adequate teaching, and is not caused by sensory impairment, emotional disturbance or lack of opportunity.

An assessment scheme that spreads evaluation across the school year and covers scholastic as well as co-scholastic areas, using observation, projects, portfolios and tests instead of one terminal examination.

Ongoing, low-stakes checks of learning during teaching, used to identify misunderstandings and adjust instruction immediately. Its value lies in the feedback it gives learners and teachers, not in marks.

The natural, largely unconscious process by which a child learns the mother tongue through everyday interaction, without formal grammar lessons, usually well before starting school.

An organised mental framework built from past experience that a reader or listener uses to interpret new text by connecting it with what is already known, filling gaps and predicting meaning.

The ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words - blending, segmenting or substituting them. It is auditory, precedes letter knowledge, and strongly predicts early reading success.

Rapid reading to grasp the general idea or gist of a passage, deliberately ignoring details. It is used to preview a text, decide whether it is useful, or answer a global question.

Reading that is accurate, reasonably paced and expressive, with words recognised automatically so attention can go to meaning. It develops through plenty of easy, repeated and guided reading practice.

An approach that treats children's home languages as assets for learning rather than obstacles, using them to explain concepts, bridge to the school language, and strengthen identity and participation.

Teaching beginners the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent, so that unfamiliar printed words can be decoded. It usually follows phonemic awareness and is most effective when taught systematically.

An approach in which the aim is real communication, so learners use the target language in meaningful, often interactive tasks, and accuracy develops alongside fluency rather than through isolated drills.

Alternating between two languages within a lesson or conversation. Teachers use it to clarify meaning; learners use it as a strategy when their command of the second language is still limited.

The influence of the first language on learning and using a second. Where the two systems match, transfer helps; where they differ, it can produce predictable errors in grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation.

A passage with words removed at regular intervals; the learner supplies words that fit the meaning and grammar. It measures comprehension, contextual guessing and lexical-grammatical control.

Listening, speaking, reading and writing - the four language skills a balanced curriculum develops. Listening and speaking are usually acquired first, and oral work supports later reading and writing.

Reading large quantities of easy, self-chosen material for pleasure and information. It builds fluency, vocabulary and confidence because the learner's attention stays on meaning rather than on difficulty.

The value a digit gains from its position in a numeral, so that the 5 in 507 means five hundreds. It underlies written algorithms, regrouping and understanding decimal numbers.

A line on which numbers are represented as evenly spaced points. Children use it to order numbers, show addition and subtraction as movement, and later place fractions and decimals.

An intuitive understanding of quantity, size and relationships among numbers, so that a child can compare, decompose, compute mentally and judge whether an answer is reasonable.

A teaching sequence that introduces a mathematical idea with physical objects (concrete), then with pictures or diagrams (pictorial), then with symbols and rules (abstract), matching how primary children build understanding.

Physical objects - counters, blocks, beads, fraction strips, geoboards - that children handle to model and explore mathematical ideas before working with written symbols.

Knowing why a mathematical rule works versus knowing the steps to carry it out. Both are needed: procedures without concepts are fragile, and concepts without procedures limit problem solving.

Approximating a number or result to a convenient nearby value. Regular estimation practice helps children judge the reasonableness of answers and deepens place-value and number-sense understanding.

Systematically examining learners' incorrect answers to identify the misconception behind them - for example, always subtracting the smaller digit from the larger - and then planning targeted reteaching.

The primary-stage subject that integrates science, social studies and environmental education around the child's immediate surroundings, taught through observation and activity rather than as separate disciplines.

Learning that begins with direct experience - doing, observing, touching, experimenting - followed by reflection that turns the experience into concepts. It is central to EVS and to activity-based primary teaching.

An organised visit outside the classroom, such as to a market, farm, park or water source, where children observe and gather real information that links EVS concepts to local life.

A unit made up of living organisms in an area together with the non-living parts they interact with - air, water, soil and sunlight - through which energy and matter move.

The series of steps by which energy passes from plants to plant-eaters, then to the animals that eat them, then to decomposers. It helps children see interdependence in nature.

Materials and energy taken from nature that people and other organisms use - water, soil, forests, minerals, fuels. Renewable resources can be replenished; non-renewable ones cannot within a human lifetime.

Using resources and meeting present needs in ways that do not destroy the ability of future generations to meet theirs; taught in EVS through examples of conservation, waste and energy use.