PECT cheat sheet

Piaget's stages: sensorimotor (0–2, object permanence), preoperational (2–7, symbolic play, egocentrism, lacks conservation), concrete operational (7–11, conservation, classification, reversibility), formal operational (11+, abstract and hypothetical reasoning).

Vygotsky: the zone of proximal development is the gap between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with assistance; scaffolding and private speech move learners through the ZPD.

Erikson's early stages: trust vs. mistrust (0–1), autonomy vs. shame and doubt (1–3), initiative vs. guilt (3–6), industry vs. inferiority (6–12).

Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, inner to outer: microsystem (family, classroom), mesosystem (links between settings), exosystem (parent's workplace), macrosystem (culture), chronosystem (change over time).

Kohlberg's levels: preconventional (obedience/punishment, self-interest), conventional (peer approval, law and order), postconventional (social contract, universal principles).

Assessment types: formative is ongoing and used to adjust instruction; summative comes at the end and summarizes achievement. Norm-referenced tests compare a student to peers; criterion-referenced tests compare performance to a fixed standard.

Reliability is consistency of scores across occasions, forms, or raters; validity is whether the test measures what it claims. A test can be reliable but invalid; it cannot be valid without being reliable.

Operant conditioning (Skinner): positive reinforcement adds a stimulus and negative reinforcement removes an aversive stimulus - both increase behavior; punishment decreases behavior.

Typical milestones: walking 9–15 months, about 50 words by 18 months, two-word combinations by 24 months, sentences of four or more words by about age 3.

Five pillars of reading instruction (National Reading Panel): phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension.

Phonological awareness develops from larger to smaller units: words → syllables → onset-rime → individual phonemes; rhyming and syllable clapping precede phoneme segmentation.

Phonics terms: digraph = two letters, one sound (sh, ch); blend = adjacent consonants each sounded (bl, str); diphthong = gliding vowel (oi, ou); silent-e (CVCe) usually makes the preceding vowel long (cap → cape).

Emergent spelling stages: pre-phonemic (scribbles or random letters), semiphonetic (partial sounds), phonetic (invented spellings), transitional (some patterns correct), conventional.

Vocabulary tiers: Tier 1 = everyday conversational words; Tier 2 = high-frequency academic words used across domains; Tier 3 = domain-specific terms such as photosynthesis or peninsula.

Cummins: BICS (conversational English) takes roughly 1–3 years; CALP (academic English) takes roughly 5–7 years; content instruction should scaffold both with visuals and modeled language.

Comprehension strategies: predicting, questioning, visualizing, monitoring, summarizing, and using text structure (sequence, compare-contrast, cause-effect, description, problem-solution).

Fluency has three components - accuracy, rate, and prosody; repeated reading with teacher modeling and feedback is the standard instructional routine.

Print concepts to check early: book orientation, left-to-right directionality, spoken-to-printed word matching, the alphabetic principle, and letter-sound correspondence.

Counting principles (Gelman & Gallistel): one-to-one correspondence, stable order, cardinality, order irrelevance, and abstraction.

Base-ten place value: each place is ten times the place to its right; composing and decomposing numbers (47 = 4 tens + 7 ones) supports regrouping with and without renaming.

Fractions: a/b means a parts of a whole divided into b equal parts and also a ÷ b; equivalent fractions are formed by multiplying numerator and denominator by the same nonzero number.

Polya's four problem-solving steps: understand the problem, devise a plan, carry out the plan, look back and check.

Scientific inquiry sequence: observe → question → hypothesize → design and conduct investigation → collect and analyze data → conclude. The independent variable is manipulated, the dependent variable is measured, and controls are held constant.

NGSS three dimensions: disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts (patterns, cause and effect, scale, systems, energy and matter, structure and function, stability and change).

Five themes of geography: location, place, human–environment interaction, movement, and regions.

Map skills: compass rose with cardinal and intermediate directions, legend/key, scale, grid coordinates, latitude (north–south) and longitude (east–west).

Primary sources are first-hand evidence (diary, letter, artifact, photograph); secondary sources interpret them. The U.S. federal government has three branches: legislative makes laws, executive enforces, judicial interprets.