Glossary

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Paraprofessional Educator: Also known as instructional aides and teachers' aides, these individuals provide assistance to teachers in the classroom. They do not provide primary direct instruction, but may help clarify material to students through home language or other supports. In classrooms funded through Title I, instructional paraprofessionals must have at least an Associates' degree or its equivalent, or have passed a test.
pervasive developmental disorder (PDD): The category of special education services for students with delays or deviance in their social/language/motor and/or cognitive development.
phoneme: The smallest unit of speech that serves to distinguish one utterance from another in a language.
phonemic awareness: The ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. An example of how beginning readers show us they have phonemic awareness is combining or blending the separate sounds of a word to say the word (/c/ /a/ /t/ – cat.)
Phonics: Phonics is a form of instruction to cultivate the understanding and use of the alphabetic principle. It emphasizes the predictable relationship between phonemes (the sounds in spoken language) and graphemes (the letters that represent those sounds in written language) and shows how this information can be used to read or decode words.

See also: Analogy-based phonics, Analytic phonics, Embedded phonics, Onset-rime phonics instruction, Phonics through spelling, Synthetic phonics, Systematic and explicit phonics instruction.
phonological awareness: A range of understandings related to the sounds of words and word parts, including identifying and manipulating larger parts of spoken language such as words, syllables, and onset and rime. It also includes phonemic awareness as well as other aspects of spoken language such as rhyming and syllabication.
physical therapy (PT): Instructional support and treatment of physical disabilities, under a doctor's prescription, that helps a person improve the use of bones, muscles, joints and nerves.
Point of view*: Chiefly in literary texts, the narrative point of view (as in first- or third-person narration); more broadly, the position or perspective conveyed or represented by an author, narrator, speaker, or character.
Portfolio assessment: A portfolio assessment is a systematic collection of student work that is analyzed to show progress over time with regard to instructional objectives (Valencia 1991, cited in O' Malley & Valdez-Pierce, 1996). Student portfolios may include responses to readings, samples of writing, drawings, or other work.
Pre-reading: Prereading activities are activities used with students before they interact with reading material. They're designed to provide students with needed background knowledge about a topic, or to help students identify their purpose for reading.
Prefix: A prefix is a word part added to the beginning of a root or base word to create a new meaning. The most common prefixes include dis- (as in disagree), in- (as invaluable), re- (as in repeat), and -un (as in unfriendly).
Prewriting: Prewriting is any activity designed to help students generate or organize their ideas before writing.
Primary language: The primary language is the language in which bilingual/multilingual speakers are most fluent, or which they prefer to use. This is not necessarily the language first learned in life. See also dominant language.
print awareness: Basic knowledge about print and how it is typically organized on a page. For example, print conveys meaning, print is read left to right, and words are separated by spaces.
Print or digital (texts, sources)*: Sometimes added for emphasis to stress that a given standard is particularly likely to be applied to electronic as well as traditional texts; the Standards are generally assumed to apply to both.
Proficient(ly)*: A student performance that meets the criterion established in the Standards as measured by a teacher or assessment; in the Standards, often paired with independent(ly) to suggest a successful student performance done without scaffolding; in the Reading standards, the act of reading a text with comprehension; see also independent(ly), scaffolding.
Pull-out ESL: Pull-out ESL is a program in which LEP students are "pulled out" of regular, mainstream classrooms for special instruction in English as a second language.
Push-in ESL: In contrast with pull-out ESL instruction, a certified ESL teacher provides ELLs with instruction in a mainstream or content-area classroom.

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.