NBPTS EMC PE key terms

Planning lessons so that content, process, or product is adjusted to learners' readiness, interests, and profiles, while all students work toward the same essential understandings and standards.

Ongoing gathering of evidence about student understanding during instruction, used to adjust teaching and give feedback rather than to assign a final grade.

Evaluation of student learning at the end of a unit or course against standards, typically reported as a grade or score and used to judge achievement.

A planning approach that begins with desired results and acceptable evidence before designing learning experiences, keeping activities aligned to identified goals rather than to coverage.

An open-ended, provocative question that frames inquiry across a unit or course, inviting multiple defensible responses and recurring examination rather than a single correct answer.

A framework for removing barriers by offering multiple means of engagement, representation, and action or expression, so varied learners can access the same rigorous goals.

Temporary supports, such as models, prompts, or structured steps, that help a learner accomplish a task beyond independent reach and are gradually withdrawn as competence grows.

The range between what a learner can do alone and what the learner can accomplish with guidance from a more capable peer or adult; instruction is most productive in this range.

A learner's awareness and regulation of their own thinking, including planning before a task, monitoring comprehension during it, and evaluating and revising afterward.

A strategy in which a teacher or student verbalizes reasoning while reading or solving a problem, making invisible cognitive processes visible for modeling and assessment.

The reader's ongoing check that text is making sense, prompting repair strategies such as rereading, clarifying vocabulary, or adjusting pace when meaning breaks down.

Careful, repeated examination of a short complex text focused on what the author says, how the text is structured, and what language choices convey, supported by text-dependent questions.

A question answerable only by returning to the text for evidence, rather than by relying on prior opinion or personal experience, anchoring discussion in what the author actually wrote.

Specific quotations, paraphrases, or details drawn from a source and cited to support an interpretation, claim, or argument in discussion and writing.

The qualitative, quantitative, and reader-and-task factors that determine how demanding a text is, used to match students with appropriately challenging material and appropriate support.

Composition that states a precise claim, supports it with logical reasoning and relevant evidence, acknowledges counterclaims, and maintains a coherent structure and tone.

A scoring guide listing criteria and performance levels that makes expectations transparent, supports consistent judgment, and gives students specific targets for revision.

Information about a learner's work that names what was done well, identifies a specific gap relative to a goal, and suggests a next step, rather than merely praising or grading.

The cycle in which learners set goals, select strategies, monitor progress, and adjust effort or approach based on evidence of their own performance.

Instruction organized around student-generated questions and investigation, in which learners gather and evaluate evidence and construct explanations rather than receive conclusions.

Extended work in which students investigate an authentic problem or question and produce a public artifact or performance, integrating knowledge and skills across disciplines.

An assessment requiring students to apply knowledge and skills to create a product or carry out a process judged against criteria, often approximating work done outside school.

Evaluation using tasks that mirror real-world application and audience, emphasizing transfer and complex performance rather than recall of isolated facts.

The ability to apply learning flexibly in a new context or to an unfamiliar problem, a central aim of deeper learning and a key criterion in backward design.

What a learner already knows and believes about a topic, which strongly shapes new understanding and may either support learning or create persistent misconceptions.

A stable but incorrect idea that learners bring to a subject; it resists simple correction and usually requires discrepant evidence and explanation to revise.

An organized mental framework of related knowledge that guides how a learner interprets new information, notices patterns, and recalls details.

The process of restructuring existing ideas, not merely adding facts, so that a learner replaces an inadequate framework with a more accurate and powerful explanation.

The limited cognitive system that holds and manipulates information during a task; instruction that overloads it reduces learning, while chunking and rehearsal ease the load.

The demand placed on working memory by a task, including load from the material itself and from how instruction is designed; unnecessary load should be minimized.

Recalling information from memory without looking it up, such as through low-stakes quizzing, which strengthens long-term retention more than rereading does.

Distributing study or review across separated sessions instead of massing it together, improving durable retention and reducing forgetting over time.

Structured group work in which students depend on one another to accomplish a shared goal, with individual accountability and explicit teaching of discussion and teamwork skills.

Classroom discussion norms requiring participants to build on others' ideas, cite evidence, and challenge reasoning respectfully rather than merely state opinions.

Using students' cultural knowledge, experiences, and communication styles as resources for learning while maintaining high expectations and examining curriculum for bias.

The skills, information, and networks families and communities possess; teachers who learn and draw on them connect school learning to students' lives.

The vocabulary, sentence structures, and discourse patterns used to convey content in school, which must be explicitly taught alongside subject concepts.

The specialized ways of reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning within a subject, such as evaluating sources in history or interpreting data in science.

Systematically examining one's own teaching decisions and their effects on students, using evidence and feedback to refine instruction over time.

A team of educators who meet regularly to examine student work and data, share practice, and improve instruction through collective inquiry focused on results.