TS TET Paper 1 flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a learner can do alone and what the learner can do with guidance from a more knowledgeable other; instruction should target this band.

Piaget's preoperational stage

Second Piagetian stage, roughly ages two to seven, marked by egocentric thought, animism, irreversibility and absence of conservation, so the child judges quantity by a single perceptual feature.

Conservation

Understanding that quantity, mass, number or volume stays the same when appearance changes; achieved in the concrete operational stage around seven to eleven years, as shown by beaker and clay tasks.

Kohlberg pre-conventional level

First of Kohlberg's three moral levels, where the child judges right and wrong by avoiding punishment and by personal gain or exchange, not by social approval or principle.

Operant conditioning

Skinner's principle that behaviour increases when followed by reinforcement and decreases when followed by punishment or no consequence; successive approximation, or shaping, builds complex behaviour step by step.

Multiple intelligences theory

Gardner's claim that intelligence is not one general ability but several relatively independent ones such as linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic, so teaching should offer varied entry points.

Formative assessment

Assessment carried out during teaching to gather evidence about learning and give immediate feedback; it is diagnostic and usually ungraded, unlike summative assessment at the end of a unit.

Dyscalculia

A specific learning disability affecting number sense and arithmetic, with difficulty in place value, number facts, sequencing and calculation but no general intellectual deficit; it needs structured, multisensory mathematics teaching.

Language acquisition device

Chomsky's proposed innate mental faculty that lets children learn any human language from exposure; it explains why complex grammar is acquired without explicit instruction or systematic correction.

BICS and CALP

Cummins' distinction: basic interpersonal communicative skills are context-embedded and take one to two years to develop, while cognitive academic language proficiency is context-reduced and takes five to seven years.

Error versus mistake

A mistake is a slip the learner can self-correct once it is pointed out; an error is systematic and reflects the learner's current interlanguage rule, so errors should be analysed rather than merely marked wrong.

Whole language approach

A meaning-first approach in which reading and writing are learned through authentic texts, prediction and context rather than through isolated sounds; it is usually contrasted with phonics-first decoding instruction.

Phonemic awareness

The ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, for example blending the separate sounds of 'sun' or deleting the first sound; it strongly predicts early reading success.

Three-language formula

Policy recommendation of the Kothari Commission and NCF 2005 that schooling include the regional language or mother tongue, Hindi and English, treating multilingualism as a classroom resource rather than a problem.

Total Physical Response

Asher's comprehension-based method in which the teacher gives spoken commands and learners respond with actions; it lowers anxiety and links listening to movement before speech is demanded.

Communicative competence

Hymes' concept that knowing a language means knowing when, where and to whom to use it, covering grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence rather than correct sentences alone.

Skimming versus scanning

Skimming is fast reading for the gist, as when previewing a chapter; scanning is fast search for a specific detail such as a date or name. Both are sub-skills of efficient reading.

Cloze test

A passage with words deleted at regular intervals or selectively, which the learner supplies from context; it measures reading comprehension together with grammatical and lexical use at discourse level.

Affective filter

Krashen's construct: anxiety, low motivation and low self-confidence raise the filter and block language intake; a supportive, low-stress classroom lowers it and allows comprehension-based acquisition to proceed.

Inflectional versus derivational morphemes

Inflectional morphemes such as plural -s, past -ed and comparative -er change grammar only and never change word class; derivational morphemes such as un-, -ness and -ful create new words or word classes.

Van Hiele levels

Five levels describing geometry learning: visualization, analysis, informal deduction, formal deduction and rigor; instruction should match the learner's level and move from shapes to properties to proof.

Concrete-pictorial-abstract sequence

Sequencing mathematics instruction from handling real objects, to drawings and diagrams, to symbols and rules; it builds understanding of place value, operations and fractions before written algorithms are introduced.

HCF and LCM relation

For any two positive integers, HCF multiplied by LCM equals the product of the numbers, so LCM equals the product divided by the HCF; a standard shortcut in fraction and word problems.

Place value

The value a digit carries because of its position; in 4,507 the 5 has face value 5 and place value 500, since place value equals face value multiplied by the value of the place.

Polya's problem-solving steps

Four stages: understand the problem, devise a plan, carry out the plan, and look back to check and generalise; the model is used to teach strategies and reflection rather than answers.

Diagnostic teaching in mathematics

Identifying the specific error pattern behind a wrong answer, for example regrouping across zero, and reteaching that concept, instead of repeating the same exercise or simply marking it wrong.

NCF 2005 EVS themes

Six themes organise EVS in classes three to five: Family and Friends; Food; Shelter; Water; Travel; and Things We Make and Do, each explored through the child's immediate environment.

Firsthand experience

Direct sensory encounter with people, places or materials, such as a field visit, cooking activity or local pond survey; it is the primary source of learning in EVS rather than textbook description.

Food chain

A sequence showing energy transfer from producer (green plant) to herbivore to carnivore, with decomposers breaking down dead matter; arrows point in the direction of energy flow.

Water cycle

The continuous movement of water through evaporation from surfaces, condensation into clouds, precipitation as rain or snow, and collection in water bodies and groundwater, driven by solar energy.

Sketch versus map

A sketch is a rough freehand drawing from observation without scale or fixed direction; a map is drawn to scale with symbols, a key and orientation, conventionally with north at the top.

Concept map

A diagram linking concepts with labelled arrows to show relationships; in EVS it both teaches integrated topics and assesses whether learners connect ideas rather than memorise isolated lists.