Ability Grouping: This one is what it sounds like; grouping kids based on their ability. How that ability is determined is something you should find out, though, if you hear that term being thrown around a lot at your kids' school. If they're basing the entire year's math class on one standardized test, that's not the best of use of ability grouping.
Assessment: An opportunity for teachers to assess student knowledge. We used to call them tests. Today there are all different kinds, though.
- Adaptive: Usually taken on a computer, adaptive tests adjust the questions based on how the child does on the beginning questions. Questions will get more difficult when the child answers correctly and easier when the child answer incorrectly.
- Criterion-Referenced: Measures student performance based on goal, objectives or standards.
- Diagnostic: A test prior to instruction, or used to find out a new student's strengths and weaknesses.
- Formative: Not so much a test as a checkpoint during instruction, to see that kids are on the right track.
- Interim/Benchmark: These might include tests given before every grade card or based on some other time requirement.
- Norm-Referenced: Measures student performance by comparing it to a national or other "norm" group of peers.
- Performance: Students demonstrate their knowledge through a hands on activity.
- Summative: The end of year or end of unit test on what students have learned.
Differentiated Instruction: Want to impress an educator? Ask how the new curriculum provides for differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction is when teachers adapt lessons and curricula so that students of all levels are appropriately challenged. Unless your child is the most average learner in every single subject, you want him/her to have differentiated instruction.
IEP or Individualized Education Plan: A legal document that lays out goals, accommodations (such as having a longer time for tests or a paraprofessional helper) and services that need to be provided to a child with a disability, as defined by the IDEA law (the individuals with disabilities education act). If your child is struggling but does not qualify for an IEP, there are 504 plans, which create learning plans for students and list the accommodations they need.
Rubric: A numerical guideline used to grade assignments. Each number in the guideline would have certain requirements, with the highest number (often a 4 or a 5) reserved for students who go beyond the assignment, such as writing 8 sentences instead of the 5 required. The next number down (a 3 or a 4) would be for students who completed the the 5 required sentences correctly. And so on.
Ummm. . . I just wrote a lot more than I had planned to. And this doesn't even cover half the words I was going to talk about. What do you guys think? Is this useful? Or does everyone just Google stuff anymore? These are just a few of the words other parents have asked me about in the last 6 months or so, because people know I used to be a teacher. I figured that if people are asking, it means that the Google response was probably overwhelming (like when I Google medical questions) and that this might work for a Teaching Tuesday post, but I don't know.
Is there any jargon you'd like me to translate? Or should I go back to ranting about educational topics? I want your honest opinion.