Primary Education Glossary
Primary Education Glossary
20 terms
Primary education is the first stage traditionally found in formal education, beginning at about age 5 to 7 and ending at about 11 to 13. Elementary teachers teach basic subjects such as reading, writing and arithmetic or specialized subjects such as English or French has a second language at public and private elementary schools
- Achievement gap
- the persistent disparity in academic achievement between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.
- Active learning
- Any learning activity in which the student participates or interacts with the learning process, as opposed to passively taking in the information.
- Assessment
- The systematic basis for making inferences about the learning and development of students.
- Benchmark
- Assessments that measure students against institution standards and learning goals.
- Child development
- The process children take as they grow from infancy into adulthood.
- Cognitive skills
- The functions your brain uses to think, pay attention, process information, and remember things, constantly aiding your thought processes and memory retention.
- Collaborative learning
- Groups of two or more learners work together to solve problems, complete tasks, or learn new concepts.
- Curriculum
- A standards-based sequence of planned experiences where students practice and achieve proficiency in content and applied learning skills.
- Evaluation
- The systematic and ongoing assessment of student learning, progress, and performance in relation to set learning objectives and standards.
- Gamification
- The process of adding games or gamelike elements to something (such as a task) so as to encourage participation.
- Grade point average
- A number representing the average value of the accumulated final grades earned in courses over time.
- Intervention
- An action taken by school personnel to support a struggling student.
- Learning target
- Student-friendly descriptions— via words, pictures, actions, or some combination of the three—of what you intend students to learn or accomplish in a given lesson.
- Open-ended task
- Have more than one right answer, solution or outcome and can be completed in more than one way.
- Open-response task
- When you ask a student a question that does not have a simple yes or no answer.
- Pedagogy
- The art and science of teaching students.
- Problem solving
- A process, which involves systematic observation and critical thinking to find an appropriate solution or way to reach the desired goal.
- Public school
- A school supported by public funds.
- Social-emotional development
- A child's ability to create and sustain meaningful relationships with adults and other children.
- Socratic method
- A dialogue between teacher and students, instigated by the continual probing questions of the teacher, in a concerted effort to explore the underlying beliefs that shape the students views and opinions.