PECT key terms

A skill or behavior most children display within a certain age range, such as walking by about 15 months. Teachers use them to monitor progress while remembering that individual children vary widely.

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen or heard. Infants develop it gradually, which is why peekaboo delights babies who have not yet mastered it.

The understanding that the amount of something stays the same when only its appearance changes, such as water poured into a taller, narrower glass. Piaget found it typically appears in middle childhood.

Piaget's term for young children's difficulty seeing a situation from another person's point of view, as when a child assumes the listener knows whom 'she' refers to.

Vygotsky's term for the range of tasks a child cannot yet do alone but can accomplish with guidance from an adult or a more capable peer.

Temporary support such as modeling, prompts, or hints that lets a child succeed at a task just beyond independent ability, gradually removed as the child takes over.

The enduring emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver. Responsive caregiving tends to produce secure attachment, which supports later exploration, self-regulation, and comfort seeking.

Ongoing, low-stakes checks during instruction that reveal what students understand so the teacher can adjust lessons and give feedback students actually use.

An evaluation given at the end of a unit, course, or year to measure what students have learned, often used for grading, reporting, or program decisions.

A test scored against a fixed standard of knowledge or skill rather than against other students, showing specifically what a child can and cannot yet do.

A test that compares a child's performance with that of a large, similar group and reports the result, for example, as a percentile rank.

Adjusting content, process, or product, and sometimes grouping or pacing, to fit students' readiness, interests, and learning profiles while keeping the same learning goals.

Brief, frequent measures used to check whether a student is responding to an intervention and gaining skills at a rate that will close the gap.

The ability to notice and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language, including syllables, rhymes, and individual sounds, without reference to letters or meaning.

The narrower skill of hearing, identifying, and manipulating individual phonemes, as in blending /c/ /a/ /t/ into 'cat' or removing the first sound from 'sun'.

Instruction in the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent, used to help children decode unfamiliar words and spell words they can already say.

The smallest unit of sound in spoken language that distinguishes one word from another; changing /m/ to /s/ turns 'mat' into 'sat'.

A letter or group of letters that spells one phoneme, such as the 'sh' standing for the single sound at the start of 'ship'.

The understanding that letters and letter patterns stand for the sounds of spoken words, and that this relationship can be used systematically to read unfamiliar words.

Using knowledge of letter-sound correspondences and spelling patterns to turn printed words into spoken words that can then be recognized and understood.

Reading connected text accurately, at a reasonable rate, and with suitable expression, smoothly enough that the reader can attend to meaning instead of laboring over each word.

Understanding how written language works: that print carries meaning, that it is read left to right and top to bottom, and that sentences are made of words and letters.

The reading and writing behaviors of children before conventional literacy, such as pretend reading, scribbling, and recognizing signs, which form the foundation for later formal instruction.

Young children's attempts to write words using the letter-sound knowledge they have, producing forms such as 'kt' for 'cat' that show developing phonemic awareness and phonics.

Building meaning from text by combining word knowledge, background knowledge, and strategies such as predicting, questioning, visualizing, and summarizing, monitored as one reads.

The process of binding a word's spelling, pronunciation, and meaning together in memory so it is recognized instantly on sight rather than decoded letter by letter.

A flexible grasp of quantities and their relationships, including knowing that numbers can be decomposed and recombined, which supports mental computation, estimation, and later arithmetic.

Recognizing how many objects are in a small set instantly, without counting, as when a child looks at four dots and simply knows there are four.

Matching one number word or object to each item in a set while counting, the foundation for accurate counting and for comparing which group has more.

The principle that the final number reached when counting a group tells how many items the group contains, a key step beyond simply reciting number names.

The idea that a digit's value depends on its position in a number, so the 3 in 342 represents three hundreds; the basis for multi-digit computation.

A teaching sequence that moves from handling physical objects, to drawing pictures of them, to using symbols and written procedures, so concepts are grounded before they become abstract.

Physical materials such as counters, connecting cubes, pattern blocks, or fraction tiles that children handle to build and show mathematical ideas.

Instruction in which children investigate their own questions through hands-on exploration, prediction, and discussion, rather than only reading about or hearing conclusions.

Observation is information gathered through the senses or measurement; inference is an explanation drawn from that evidence. Children need explicit practice telling the two apart.

The ordered stages an organism passes through from birth through reproduction to death, such as egg, larva, pupa, and adult in a butterfly.

An early economics pair: goods are physical things people make or grow, while services are actions people perform for others, such as teaching or repairing.

Reading and making representations of places using symbols, a legend, a compass rose, and a scale, along with understanding relative location.

Firsthand evidence created during the period being studied, such as a photograph, letter, artifact, or diary, as contrasted with a later textbook summary.