Glossary
The education field is so full of acronyms and specialized words that it can seem like a confusing alphabet soup! Find out what AYP, IEP, 504, and many other abbreviations and words mean in this glossary of frequently used terms.
- Mainstream
- "Mainstream" is a term that refers to the ordinary classroom that almost all children attend. Accommodations may be made for children with disabilities or who are English language learners, as part of the general educational program.
- Metacognition
- Metacognition is the process of "thinking about thinking." For example, good readers use metacognition before reading when they clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text.
- Monitor Model
- In the monitor model, linguist Stephen Krashen proposes that language learning is accomplished either through learning (formal, conscious learning about language) or through acquisition (informal, subconscious learning through experience with language). He suggests that there is an internal "monitor," which is developed through formal learning which is a part of the conscious process of error correction in when speaking a new language. The monitor plays only a minor role in developing fluency, compared to the role of acquisition. This model later became part of Krashen and Terrell's Natural Approach to language teaching (Krashen & Terrell, 1983).
- Monitoring comprehension
- Readers who monitor their comprehension know when they understand what they read and when they do not. Students are able to use appropriate "fix-up" strategies to resolve problems in comprehension.
- More sustained research project*
- An investigation intended to address a relatively expansive query using several sources over an extended period of time, as in a few weeks of instructional time.
- morpheme
- The smallest meaningful unit of language. A morpheme can be one syllable (book) or more than one syllable (seventeen). It can be a whole word or a part of a word such as a prefix or suffix. For example, the word ungrateful contains three morphemes: un, grate, and ful.
- Morphemic relationship
- The morphemic relationship is the relationship between one morpheme and another. In the word books, book is a free morpheme (it has meaning by itself) and -s is a bound morpheme (it has meaning only when attached to a free morpheme).
- morphology
- The study of how the aspects of language structure are related to the ways words are formed from prefixes, roots, and suffixes (e.g., mis-spell-ing), and how words are related to each other.
- morphophonology
- Using a word's letter patterns to help determine, in part, the meaning and pronunciation of a word. For example, the morpheme vis in words such as vision and visible is from the Latin root word that means to see; and the ay in stay is pronounced the same in the words gray and play.
- Mother tongue
- This term variably means (a) the language learned from the mother, (b) the first language learned, (c) the native language of an area or country, (d) the stronger (or dominant) language at any time of life, (e) the language used most by a person, (f) the language toward which the person has the more positive attitude and affection (Baker, 2000). See also native language.
- Multiple Intelligences
- A theory that suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on IQ testing, is far too limited. Instead, it proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist.
- Multiple literacies
- Multiple literacies reach beyond a traditional 'reading and writing' definition of literacy to include the ability to process and interpret information presented through various media.
- multisensory structured language education
- An educational approach that uses visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile cues simultaneously to enhance memory and learning. Links are consistently made between the visual (what we see), auditory (what we hear), and kinesthetic-tactile (what we feel) pathways in learning to read and spell.
These terms and definitions were collected from the following sources: Dr. Jean Lokerson, ERIC Digest; Southwest Educational Laboratory (SEDL); Dr. Linda Wilmshurst and Dr. Alan Brue, A Parent's Guide to Special Education, American Management Association, 2005; The Partnership for Reading; Learning Disabilities Council; Dr. Don Deshler, University of Kansas.
*Source: Common Core State Standards. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010.