MTTC Elementary Education (103) cheat sheet

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate individual phonemes orally; phonics is the mapping of those sounds to letters in print.

The five essential components of reading instruction are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Fluency comprises accuracy, automaticity, and prosody; a common benchmark is oral reading at roughly 90-100 correct words per minute for grade-level text by end of grade 3.

The Simple View of Reading: Reading Comprehension = Decoding x Language Comprehension; a weakness in either factor limits overall comprehension.

Running records measure accuracy rate, error rate, and self-correction rate; accuracy below 90 percent signals the text is at frustration level.

In a syllable, the onset is the initial consonant sound and the rime is the vowel plus any following consonants; rimes form word families.

The alphabetic principle holds that speech sounds map to letters systematically; digraphs are two letters producing one sound (sh, ch, th), while blends retain both sounds (bl, st).

Writing process stages are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing; revising addresses content and organization, editing addresses conventions.

Place value is positional: in 4,582 the 5 represents 5 hundreds, or 500; each place to the left is ten times the value of the place to its right.

Fractions are equivalent when a/b = (a x n)/(b x n); multiplying numerator and denominator by the same nonzero number preserves value.

To divide by a fraction, multiply by its reciprocal: (a/b) / (c/d) = (a/b) x (d/c).

Area formulas: rectangle A = l x w; triangle A = (1/2)bh; circle A = pi x r squared; circumference C = 2 x pi x r.

Volume of a rectangular prism equals length x width x height; surface area is the sum of the areas of all faces.

Mean is the sum divided by the count; median is the middle value of ordered data; mode is the most frequent value; range is maximum minus minimum.

The commutative and associative properties apply to addition and multiplication but not to subtraction or division.

A prime number has exactly two factors, 1 and itself; 1 is neither prime nor composite, and 2 is the only even prime.

The scientific method cycle: question, hypothesis, controlled experiment, data collection, analysis, conclusion; a hypothesis must be testable and falsifiable.

In a controlled experiment the independent variable is manipulated, the dependent variable is measured, and all other variables are held constant.

Matter exists in solid, liquid, and gas states; phase changes (melting, freezing, evaporation, condensation) are physical changes that do not alter chemical identity.

Photosynthesis converts carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen using light energy captured by chlorophyll in chloroplasts.

Food chains transfer energy from producers to consumers to decomposers; only about 10 percent of energy passes to the next trophic level.

Newton's laws: an object at rest stays at rest unless acted on by a net force; F = ma; every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Earth's water cycle involves evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and collection; the Sun is the energy source.

The rock cycle includes igneous (cooled magma), sedimentary (compacted deposits), and metamorphic (heat and pressure) rocks.

The three branches of U.S. federal government are legislative (Congress, makes laws), executive (President, enforces laws), and judicial (courts, interprets laws).

Checks and balances include veto power, congressional override by two-thirds vote, and judicial review established by Marbury v. Madison (1803).

The Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments; the First Amendment protects speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition.

The Constitution's structure: Preamble, seven Articles, and 27 amendments; the Great Compromise created a bicameral Congress.

Basic economic concepts: scarcity forces choices; opportunity cost is the value of the next best alternative forgone.

Map skills: latitude lines run east-west and measure distance north or south of the equator; longitude lines run north-south and measure east or west of the prime meridian.

Primary sources are firsthand evidence (letters, artifacts, diaries); secondary sources interpret or analyze primary sources (textbooks, encyclopedias).

Major eras in U.S. history sequence: exploration and colonization, revolution, constitutional founding, westward expansion, Civil War, Reconstruction, industrialization, world wars, civil rights.

Piaget's stages: sensorimotor (0-2, object permanence), preoperational (2-7, symbolic thought, egocentrism), concrete operational (7-11, conservation), formal operational (11+, abstract reasoning).

Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is the gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with assistance; scaffolding supports that gap.

Erikson's psychosocial stages relevant to schooling include industry versus inferiority (roughly ages 6-12).

Kohlberg's moral development progresses from preconventional (reward and punishment) to conventional (social approval and law) to postconventional (universal principles).

Maslow's hierarchy orders needs from physiological and safety upward through belonging, esteem, and self-actualization; unmet lower needs impede learning.

Bloom's revised taxonomy orders cognitive processes: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create.

Intrinsic motivation arises from interest and satisfaction; extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards, which can undermine intrinsic interest over time.

Formative assessment informs instruction during learning; summative assessment evaluates learning at the end of a unit.