PECT flashcards

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

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight; develops during Piaget's sensorimotor stage, typically between about 8 and 12 months of age.

Conservation

Piaget's principle that the amount of a substance stays the same despite changes in its appearance or arrangement; typically achieved in the concrete operational stage, around ages 7 to 11.

Zone of proximal development

Vygotsky's term for the range of tasks a child cannot yet do alone but can accomplish with guidance from a more capable person; instruction is most effective within this range.

Scaffolding

Temporary supports such as modeling, prompts, or hints provided by a teacher or peer; they are gradually withdrawn as the learner takes over more of the task independently.

Egocentrism

In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another person's point of view, demonstrated in tasks such as the three-mountain scene.

Formative assessment

Ongoing, low-stakes checking of student understanding during instruction, used to give feedback and adjust teaching; contrasted with summative assessment given at the end of a unit.

Criterion-referenced assessment

An assessment that compares a student's performance to a fixed standard or set of learning objectives rather than to the scores of other students taking the same test.

Reliability and validity

Reliability is the consistency of scores across occasions, forms, or raters; validity is whether a test measures what it claims. A test can be reliable without being valid.

Negative reinforcement

Removing or avoiding an unpleasant stimulus after a behavior, which increases the likelihood that the behavior recurs; it differs from punishment, which decreases behavior.

Industry versus inferiority

Erikson's psychosocial stage for roughly ages 6 to 12, when children seek to master skills and gain peer recognition; repeated failure or criticism can foster feelings of inadequacy.

Accommodation (Piaget)

In Piaget's theory, modifying an existing mental schema to fit new information, as when a child revises a concept of bird after seeing an ostrich.

Phonemic awareness

The ability to notice and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words, such as blending /k/ /a/ /t/ into cat; it is auditory and does not require printed letters.

Alphabetic principle

The understanding that letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of spoken language and can be blended to read and spell words.

Digraph versus blend

A digraph is two letters that make one sound (sh, ch, th); a consonant blend is two or more consonants whose individual sounds are all heard (bl, st, str).

Onset and rime

The onset is the consonant or consonants before the vowel in a syllable; the rime is the vowel plus everything after it, as in c-at or str-ing.

Reading fluency

Reading text accurately, at an appropriate rate, and with expression, or prosody; fluent reading frees a reader's attention for comprehension of meaning.

Tier 2 vocabulary

High-frequency words that appear across many content areas, such as compare, explain, or estimate; they are high-value targets for direct vocabulary instruction.

BICS and CALP

Cummins's distinction between basic interpersonal communication skills, which take roughly one to three years, and cognitive academic language proficiency, which typically takes five to seven years.

Semiphonetic spelling

An emergent spelling stage in which a child represents words with a few letters, often one per word or syllable, showing partial sound awareness, as in MK for milk.

Morpheme

The smallest unit of meaning in a word; free morphemes stand alone (dog), while bound morphemes such as -s, un-, or -ness must attach to another morpheme.

Concept of word

The understanding that sentences are made of separate spoken words that match printed words separated by spaces; a foundational print concept for beginning readers.

Running record

A one-to-one recording of a child's oral reading that notes errors, substitutions, and self-corrections; used to calculate accuracy and identify an appropriate instructional text level.

Cardinality

The counting principle that the last number named when counting a set tells how many objects are in that set.

Subitizing

The rapid, accurate recognition of the number of items in a small set, such as instantly seeing four dots, without counting them one by one.

Commutative property

The rule that changing the order of addends or factors does not change the result: a + b = b + a and a × b = b × a. It does not hold for subtraction or division.

Place value

The principle that a digit's value is determined by its position; in base ten each place is ten times the value of the place to its right.

Five themes of geography

Location, place, human–environment interaction, movement, and regions; an organizing framework for teaching geography in elementary social studies.

Primary source

First-hand evidence created by people who experienced an event, such as letters, diaries, photographs, or artifacts; contrasted with secondary sources that interpret such evidence.

Crosscutting concepts

One of the three dimensions of the Next Generation Science Standards; broad ideas such as patterns, cause and effect, scale, systems, and structure and function.

Water cycle

The continuous movement of water through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection, driven by energy from the sun and by gravity.

Rotation and revolution

Earth's rotation on its axis produces day and night and takes about 24 hours; its revolution around the sun produces the year and takes about 365 days.

Polya's four steps

A problem-solving framework: understand the problem, devise a plan, carry out the plan, and look back to check and reflect on the solution.