TS TET Paper 1 cheat sheet

Piaget's four stages: sensorimotor (0-2 years, object permanence, reflex to goal-directed action); preoperational (2-7, egocentrism, animism, irreversibility, no conservation, centration); concrete operational (7-11, conservation, classification, seriation, reversibility, decentration); formal operational (11+, abstract and hypothetico-deductive reasoning).

Vygotsky: development is social first, individual later. ZPD is the gap between unaided and assisted performance; scaffolding is temporary, gradually withdrawn support; private speech becomes inner speech and guides thinking; the more knowledgeable other can be a peer, adult or tool.

Kohlberg's three levels, two stages each: pre-conventional (punishment-obedience, instrumental exchange); conventional (good boy-nice girl, law and order); post-conventional (social contract, universal ethical principles). Stage 4 reasoning is common by late childhood; stage 6 is rare.

Erikson's psychosocial stages relevant to elementary schooling: trust vs mistrust (0-1), autonomy vs shame and doubt (1-3), initiative vs guilt (3-6), industry vs inferiority (6-12). Repeated failure or ridicule in class pushes the child towards the inferiority pole.

Conditioning: classical (Pavlov) pairs a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus so it becomes a conditioned stimulus; operant (Skinner) shapes behaviour through positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishment and extinction. Thorndike's laws are readiness, exercise and effect.

Intelligence: Spearman's general factor g; Thurstone's primary mental abilities; Guilford's structure-of-intellect with divergent thinking at its core; Gardner's eight multiple intelligences; Sternberg's triarchic theory (analytical, creative, practical). IQ = (mental age / chronological age) x 100.

Constructivist strands: Piaget stresses individual assimilation and accommodation into schemas; Vygotsky stresses social mediation and cultural tools; Bruner stresses spiral curriculum, enactive-iconic-symbolic representation and discovery learning; Dewey stresses learning by doing and democratic classrooms.

RTE Act 2009: free and compulsory education for ages 6-14; no capitation fee or screening; no detention or expulsion till elementary completion; no board examination till class VIII; 25% seats in private unaided schools for disadvantaged groups; pupil-teacher ratio 30:1 at primary; School Management Committees with parent majority.

Assessment and disability mapping: formative assessment is during teaching for feedback, summative is at the end for reporting; continuous and comprehensive evaluation covers scholastic and co-scholastic areas. Dyslexia affects reading and spelling, dysgraphia writing, dyscalculia number and calculation, dyspraxia motor coordination; ADHD affects attention and impulse control, not intelligence.

Natural order of language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing. Oral competence precedes literacy; a child who has not heard and said a word pattern fluently should not be drilled on writing it first.

Krashen's distinction: acquisition is subconscious, meaning-driven and occurs in natural communication; learning is conscious rule study with error correction. The monitor hypothesis limits conscious rules to editing, and the affective filter (anxiety, low motivation) blocks intake.

Chomsky's language acquisition device and universal grammar explain rapid, rule-governed first-language acquisition without explicit teaching; Skinner's behaviourist account explains vocabulary and imitation but not the production of novel, never-heard sentences such as overgeneralised forms.

Approach selection rules: grammar-translation when rules and L1 support are needed for literate adults; direct method when immersion without L1 is possible; communicative language teaching when the goal is functional use; total physical response when learners are beginners and anxious; task-based when real outcomes drive language.

Error versus mistake: a mistake is a performance slip the learner can self-correct once pointed out; an error is systematic and reveals the learner's current interlanguage rule. Overgeneralisation ('I goed', 'two mouses') is evidence of rule learning, not carelessness, and should be handled by modelling the correct form.

Reading: phonics builds sound-letter correspondence, blending and segmenting for decoding; the whole-language approach builds meaning from authentic text and context; sight vocabulary handles irregular high-frequency words. Skimming gives gist, scanning locates a specific detail, intensive reading analyses, extensive reading builds fluency.

Multilingualism is a classroom resource, not a deficit: the child's home language can bridge to the school language, and NCF 2005 endorses the three-language formula (regional language or mother tongue, Hindi, English) with a multilingual classroom as the norm.

First-language assessment tools: dictation for spelling and sound discrimination, cloze for context-based comprehension, oral reading fluency measured in correct words per minute, retelling for comprehension, portfolio and writing rubric for process and product. A single written test cannot sample listening and speaking.

English has about 44 phonemes (around 24 consonants and 20 vowels including diphthongs) but only 26 letters, so letter-sound mapping must be taught explicitly: consonant digraphs (sh, ch, th), vowel digraphs (ai, ee, oa) and the silent e rule that makes 'cap' become 'cape'.

Communicative competence (Hymes) has four components: grammatical (form), sociolinguistic (appropriateness of register and politeness), discourse (cohesion and coherence across sentences) and strategic (repair and circumlocution). Correct grammar alone is not communicative competence.

Stages of second-language acquisition: silent or receptive period (listening, minimal speech), early production (single words and formulae), speech emergence (short phrases with errors), intermediate fluency (longer utterances, self-correction). Pushing a silent-period child to speak raises anxiety and slows progress.

Method matching: grammar-translation for reading and rules; audio-lingual for habit-forming drills and dialogues; communicative language teaching for real interaction; total physical response for listening comprehension through commands; task-based learning for outcome-oriented pair and group work; silent way for learner autonomy through coloured rods.

Reading sub-skills: skimming for gist, scanning for specific information, predicting from title and pictures, inferring meaning of unfamiliar words from context, recognising cohesive devices (however, therefore, on the other hand), and distinguishing fact from opinion.

Morphology rules: free morphemes stand alone (book); bound morphemes attach and are either inflectional (plural -s, past -ed, comparative -er, which change grammar only) or derivational (un-, -ness, -ful, which change word class or meaning). Syntax: word order subject-verb-object, subject-verb agreement, article use.

Correction decision rule: in fluency work (role play, storytelling, discussion) note errors and correct later or indirectly by recasting; in accuracy work (drills, grammar exercises, editing) correct immediately. Interference from the mother tongue appears in articles, prepositions, tense and word order.

Assessment in English: cloze tests for discourse-level reading, dictation for spelling and listening, role play and picture description for speaking with a rubric (fluency, accuracy, pronunciation, task fulfilment), portfolio and process writing for composition. Weight each skill separately rather than scoring only grammar.

Place value: place value = face value x value of the place. In 4,507 the face value of 5 is 5 and its place value is 500. Indian system periods are ones, thousands, lakhs, crores; the international system uses ones, thousands, millions, billions.

Divisibility rules: by 2 if the last digit is even; by 5 if it ends in 0 or 5; by 10 if it ends in 0; by 3 or 9 if the digit sum is divisible by 3 or 9; by 4 if the last two digits form a multiple of 4; by 11 if the difference between the sums of alternate digits is 0 or a multiple of 11.

HCF and LCM: for any two positive integers, HCF x LCM = product of the numbers, so LCM = (a x b) / HCF. HCF is the product of common prime factors with the lowest powers; LCM takes all prime factors with the highest powers.

Fractions: a fraction is equivalent when numerator and denominator are multiplied or divided by the same non-zero number; compare by cross multiplication (a/b vs c/d, compare a x d with c x b); division by a fraction equals multiplication by its reciprocal. Decimal place values run tenths, hundredths, thousandths.

Geometry across Van Hiele levels: visualization (shapes recognised by appearance), analysis (properties listed), informal deduction (properties related, shape classes), formal deduction (proof), rigor (abstract systems). Instruction must match the learner's level; a class II child sorting shapes is not ready for proofs.

Measurement formulas and conversions: perimeter of rectangle = 2(l + b); area of rectangle = l x b; area of square = s x s; area of triangle = half of base x height; circumference of circle = 2 pi r; area of circle = pi r squared. 1 m = 100 cm, 1 km = 1000 m, 1 kg = 1000 g, 1 litre = 1000 mL, 1 hour = 60 minutes.

Problem-solving and computation aids: Polya's four steps are understand the problem, devise a plan, carry out the plan, and look back; the unitary method finds the value of one unit before the required quantity; average = sum of observations / number of observations.

Pedagogy rules: follow concrete-pictorial-abstract sequence with Dienes blocks, abacus, geoboard, fraction kit and tangram; diagnose the error pattern behind a wrong answer (for example regrouping across zero) rather than repeating the exercise; avoid speed pressure, which triggers maths anxiety and premature rule memorising.

Key developmental constraint: conservation of number is absent in the preoperational stage, so a class I child may say a spread-out row of five counters has 'more' than a bunched row of five. Piaget's concrete operational stage (7-11) is when reversibility makes place value and borrowing intelligible.

Scope rule: EVS is taught in classes III to V as one integrated subject combining science and social studies, because the child experiences family, food, water and travel as whole events, not as separate disciplines. Classes I-II work on language and number readiness rather than EVS.

The six NCF 2005 EVS themes are Family and Friends (including animals and plants), Food, Shelter, Water, Travel, and Things We Make and Do. Every lesson should be traceable to one of these themes and to the child's immediate environment.

Process skills developed in EVS: observing, classifying, measuring, predicting, inferring, communicating, and recording. A lesson that only asks children to memorise definitions develops none of these.

Firsthand experience (a field visit, a local pond, cooking, a market survey) is the primary source of EVS learning; secondhand experience (pictures, stories, videos, textbooks) supplements it. Decision rule: use the nearest real object or place before any substitute.

Core content facts: food chain runs producer (green plant) to herbivore to carnivore with arrows showing energy flow; decomposers return nutrients to soil; herbivore, carnivore, omnivore and scavenger are diet classes; animals show adaptations such as camouflage, migration, hibernation; a habitat provides food, water, shelter and space.

Water and resources: water cycle stages are evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection; sources are rain, rivers, lakes, wells and groundwater; conservation measures include rainwater harvesting, drip irrigation, closing taps and preventing pollution. Waste management follows reduce, reuse, recycle.

Map and spatial skills: four cardinal directions with north at the top by convention; symbols give a key; scale relates map distance to ground distance; a sketch is freehand without scale, a plan is a top view of a building, a map is drawn to scale with directions. Children first draw their own classroom and route to school.

Assessment in EVS: observation of process skills, project and field report, concept map linking ideas, portfolio of drawings and collections, oral explanation. Rote-recall-only tests contradict the subject's aim, so use open questions such as 'what would happen if the pond dried up'.