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.

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Scaffolding: A way of teaching in which the teacher provides support in the form of modeling, prompts, direct explanations, and targeted questions — offering a teacher-guided approach at first. As students begin to acquire mastery of targeted objectives, direct supports are reduced and the learning becomes more student-guided. The teacher provides contextual supports for meaning during instruction or assessment, such as visual displays, classified lists, or tables or graphs (O' Malley & Valdez-Pierce, 1996, p.240).
Scaffolding*: Temporary guidance or assistance provided to a student by a teacher, another adult, or a more capable peer, enabling the student to perform a task he or she otherwise would not be able to do alone, with the goal of fostering the student's capacity to perform the task on his or her own later on.
self-advocacy: The development of specific skills and understandings that enable children and adults to explain their specific learning disabilities to others and cope positively with the attitudes of peers, parents, teachers, and employers.
Self-Monitoring: The ability to observe yourself and know when you are doing an activity act according to a standard. For example, knowing if you do or do not understand what you are reading. Or whether your voice tone is appropriate for the circumstances or too loud or too soft.
Semantic Maps: A semantic map is a strategy for graphically representing concepts. As a strategy, semantic maps involve expanding a student's vocabulary by encouraging new links to familiar concepts. Instructionally, semantic maps can be used as a prereading activity for charting what is known about a concept, theme, or individual word. They can also be used during reading as a way to assimilate new information learned from the text.
semantic organizers: Graphic organizers that look somewhat like a spider web where lines connect a central concept to a variety of related ideas and events.
Sentence combining: Sentence combining is an instructional approach that involves teaching students to combine two or more simple sentences to form a more complex or sophisticated sentence.
Short research project*: An investigation intended to address a narrowly tailored query in a brief period of time, as in a few class periods or a week of instructional time.
sight words: Words that a reader recognizes without having to sound them out. Some sight words are "irregular," or have letter-sound relationships that are uncommon. Some examples of sight words are you, are, have and said.
Small learning communities: Small learning communities are an increasingly popular approach for teaching adolescents. This approach uses personalized classroom environments where teachers know each individual student and can tailor instruction to meet their academic and social/emotional needs. The goal is to increase students' sense of belonging, participation, and commitment to school.
social English: Often referred to as "playground English" or "survival English", this is the basic language ability required for face-to-face communication, often accompanied by gestures and relying on context to aid understanding. Social English is much more easily and quickly acquired than academic English, but is not sufficient to meet the cognitive and linguistic demands of an academic classroom. Also referred to as Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS).
Source*: A text used largely for informational purposes, as in research.
special education (SPED): Services offered to children who possess one or more of the following disabilities: specific learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, multiple disabilities, hearing impairments, orthopedic impairments, visual impairments, autism, combined deafness and blindness, traumatic brain injury, and other health impairments.
specific learning disability (SLD): The official term used in federal legislation to refer to difficulty in certain areas of learning, rather than in all areas of learning. Synonymous with learning disabilities.
speech impaired (SI): A category of special education services for students who have difficulty with speech sounds in their native language.
Speech Language Pathologist (SLP): An expert who can help children and adolescents who have language disorders to understand and give directions, ask and answer questions, convey ideas, and improve the language skills that lead to better academic performance. An SLP can also counsel individuals and families to understand and deal with speech and language disorders.
Standard English*: In the Standards, the most widely accepted and understood form of expression in English in the United States; used in the Standards to refer to formal English writing and speaking; the particular focus of Language standards 1 and 2 (CCSS, pp. 26, 28, 52, 54).
State education agency (SEA): A state education agency is the agency primarily responsible for the state supervision of public elementary and secondary schools.
Story structure: In story structure, a reader sees the way the content and events of a story are organized into a plot. Students learn to identify the categories of content (setting, characters, initiating events, internal reactions, goals, attempts, and outcomes). Often students recognize the way the story is organized by developing a story map. This strategy improves students' comprehension and memory of story content and meaning.
Strategic Instructional Model (SIM): SIM promotes effective teaching and learning of critical content in schools. SIM strives to help teachers make decisions about what is of greatest importance, what we can teach students to help them to learn, and how to teach them well.

For more information visit the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning website.
Striving Readers Act: Striving Readers is aimed at improving the reading skills of middle school- and high school-aged students who are reading below grade level. Striving Readers supports the implementation and evaluation of research-based reading interventions for struggling middle and high school readers in Title I eligible schools that are at risk of not meeting or are not meeting adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act, or that have significant percentages or number of students reading below grade level, or both.

For more information visit the USDOE website.
Striving Readers legislation: Striving Readers is a government program designed to improve the reading skills of middle and high school students who read below grade level. Authorized in 2005 as part of the No Child Left Behind Act, this program supports initiatives to improve literacy instruction across the curriculum and works to build a scientific research base for strategies that improve literacy skills for adolescents.
Suffix: "A suffix is a word part that is added to the end of a root word. The four most frequent suffixes account for 97 percent of suffixed words in printed school English. These include -ing, -ed, -ly, and -es."
Summarizing: Summarizing is a process in which a reader synthesizes the important ideas in a text. Teaching students to summarize helps them generate main ideas, connect central ideas, eliminate redundant and unnecessary information, and remember what they read.
Summative Assessment: Summative assessment is generally carried out at the end of a course or project. In an educational setting, summative assessments are typically used to assign students a course grade.
supplemental services: Services offered to students from low-income families who are attending schools that have been identified as in need of improvement for two consecutive years. Parents can choose the appropriate services (tutoring, academic assistance, etc.) from a list of approved providers, which are paid for by the school district.
syllabication: The act of breaking words into syllables.
syllable: A part of a word that contains a vowel or, in spoken language, a vowel sound (e-vent, news-pa-per).
Synthetic phonics: In this instructional approach, students learn how to convert letters or letter combinations into a sequence of sounds, and then how to blend the sounds together to form recognizable words.
Systematic and explicit phonics instruction: The most effective way to teach phonics. A program is systematic if the plan of instruction includes a carefully selected set of letter-sound relationships that are organized into a logical sequence. Explicit means the programs provide teachers with precise directions for the teaching of these relationships.

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.