Terminology

Terminology For Parents

In order to communicate effectively with your child’s teachers, you need to know the language of educators. The terms below are particularly relevant to gifted education. Each word or phrase is defined in the usual or conventional meaning of the term.

Ability Grouping
Grouping students by need, interest, or ability. Groups can be formed and reformed to meet varied instructional purposes. All students need to participate in both homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping patterns. Ability grouping in not synonymous with “tracking.”
Accelerated Learning
Pacing students through the curriculum at a rate commensurate with their advanced ability, allowing them to go as far and as fast as they want to go.
At-Risk
Students who may underachieve or who may drop out of school. Unmet economic, physical, emotional, linguistic, and/or academic needs may inhibit a student’s ability to learn or attend school. That a gifted student may also be an at-risk student is being more widely recognized.
Authentic Assessment
Process of evaluating student learning using student products or performance instead of traditional standardized tests. It allows students to be evaluated with regard to their individuality and creativity.
Cluster Grouping
Organizing a heterogeneous classroom by assigning students with similar needs, interests, and/or abilities to the same classroom.
As the percentage of gifted students in a heterogeneous classroom increases, cluster grouping becomes beneficial to the gifted. It provides for the gifted child to work during the academic day with other gifted students who share similar needs, interests, and abilities.
Cooperative Learning
Assigning a common task and/or project to a group of students with varying ability levels often reflecting the full range of student achievement and aptitude. The purpose of such learning is to prepare students to live in a democratic society; to help them understand group membership and group dynamics; and to allow them to practice both leadership and follower skills.
Cooperative learning must be used with caution. Misuse of the process occurs when gifted children are assigned to help others learn rather than being allowed to advance at their own pace.
Critical Thinking
The development of analytical thinking for purposes of decision making. This includes using specific attitudes and skills such as analyzing arguments and reaching sound conclusions.
Curriculum Compacting
A process used to give students validation for what they already know. It allows students who demonstrate mastery to omit portions of assigned curriculum, or to move more quickly through curriculum than would be typical. Students are thus able to “buy time” which can be used to accelerate content or to pursue enrichment activities while the unit is being taught to other students.
 It is important, that the “time bought” be used by students to pursue their studies in greater depth and complexity and to further their own educational goals. Students should not be expected to use the extra time by serving as teachers’ helpers, in tutoring less advanced classmates, or in doing repetitive work already mastered.
Differentiation
Adapting the curriculum to meet the unique needs of learners by making modifications in complexity, depth, and pacing. It may include selecting, rather than covering all, the curriculum areas dependent on the individual needs of students. Curriculum should be differentiated for all students. There should be multiple paths for success in all classrooms.
Heterogeneous/Homogeneous Grouping
Grouping heterogeneously generally occurs by chronological age level and without regard for diverse needs of students, their learning styles, or their interests. Homogeneous grouping is based on common criteria such as the students’ interests, special needs, or academic abilities.
Students should be grouped for at least some part of the educational day in an appropriate setting, based on a commonality of the students’ intellectual, academic, and/or affective needs. There should be a defined educational experience in this grouping.
Honors Class
A secondary level course specifically designed to be advanced in content, process, and product. Traditionally, students who meet prerequisite criteria are accepted into these courses. Honors classes should be available for, but not limited to, identified gifted students.
Mandated Program
A legally required program or action authorized by law. Gifted education is not mandated by Washington State law.
Multiple Intelligences
The theory that intelligence can be expressed in a variety of ways and is not limited to the rational linear mode. The theory commonly associated with Howard Gardner identifies at least seven intelligences: linguistic, musical, spatial, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.
Rubric
A rubric or scoring guide is an assessment scale. Each interval along the scale represents a specific level of learning from the novice to expert. The levels of learning are accompanied by specific descriptors of the type and quality of work.
Rubrics or scoring guides are used to provide students and their teachers with a clear understanding of what is expected as outstanding work.
Standards
Content standards means the specific academic knowledge, skills, and abilities that all public schools in this state are expected to teach and all pupils are expected to learn in each of the core curriculum areas, at each grade level.
Performance standards are standards that define various levels of competence at each grade level in each of the curriculum areas for which content standards are established. Performance standards gauge the degree to which a students has met the content standards and the degree to which a school or school district has met the content standards.
Tracking
Fixed groups that are rigidly maintained over time. This word in NOT synonymous with grouping and does not preclude opportunities for special needs groups for any learner at some time.
Underachieving
A discrepancy between recognized potential and actual academic performance. The causes of underachievement may be social, emotional, physical, and/or academic. A good program serves all of its gifted students, not just those who are achieving. Inappropriate curriculum often has as its consequence the underachieving gifted. Special counseling for underachieving gifted may constitute an appropriate learning opportunity.