Vocabulary for Literacy Recommendations

Today's Vocabulary Words
Learning these words will help you communicate with your child's teacher and the school in general.
Assessment - To test or evaluate...is used to determine what students know and what they can do. Students, teachers, principals and superintendents are assessed.

Authentic Portfolio - A collection of a student's work specifically selected to tell a particular story about the student. Students perform authentic tasks which demonstrate application of knowledge and skills. Their portfolios tell compelling stories of the growth of talent and showcases individual skills and abilities.

Benchmarks - a point of reference for measurement of student achievement. A standard by which something can be measured. (In this case student achievement.)

Curriculum - means two things:

• the range of courses from which students choose what subject matters to study,
• a specific learning program. The curriculum collectively describes the teaching, learning, and assessment materials available for a given course of study.

Curriculum Development - Usually takes the form of a workshop and offers specific tools which teachers and schools can use as they design curriculum, develop assessment tasks, and create the classroom practices that will lead to significant student learning and growth.

Differentiate Instruction - involves providing students with different avenues to acquiring content; to processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and to developing teaching materials so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability. Everyone learns differently. Teachers must construct lessons with this fact in mind.

Disaggregated data - Disaggregated data means looking at test scores by specific subgroups of students.

Literacy - Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write.

Professional Development - Continuing education for teachers. It enables them to keep up with and learn new teaching strategies that contribute to improving student achievement.

"How are the children?"