Tag Archives: cognition/learning/understanding

Perry Preschool Project

“Perry Preschool Project: A longitudinal study that examined the lives of 123 African American children born in poverty and at high risk of school failure. From 1962 to 1967, at ages 3 and 4, the subjects were randomly divided into a program group that received a high-quality preschool program and a comparison group that received no preschool program. Those who participated in the high-quality preschool program were later found to have higher earnings, to be more likely to be employed, to be less likely to have committed crimes, and to be more likely to have graduated from high school than were adults from the comparison group who had received no preschool education.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

R.D. Laing on Insanity

“Insanity: a perfectly rational adjustment to the insane world.”

R.D. Laing

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

Term of Art: Summarization

“summarization: The process of determining important information in a text and explaining it briefly in one’s own words.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

Term of Art: Sound Blending

“sound blending: The ability to hear sounds in isolation and then blend them into a continuous word. Sound blending requires auditory perception skills to take in information and reproduce the sounds fluently. For example, an instructor may say ‘put /m/ /a/ /t/ together’ to assess if the student can say mat. Sound blending is an important skill to develop the awareness of word sounds.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Term of Art: Sound/Letter/Word Retrieval

“sound/letter/word retrieval: The process of reading requires a student to quickly retrieve sounds, letters, and words. Research has shown that a delay in naming pictures, symbols, letters, and words is an accurate predictor of reading problems. Problems in retrieving are probably due to memory retrieval problems that make it difficult to access phonological and verbal information.

Sound, letter, and word retrieval interventions are available, such as computer software programs that slow the pace of language to allow individuals to retrain the pace of language processing.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Term of Art: Specific Learning Disability

“specific learning disability: A legal term that plays a central role legislation governing learning disabilities. As described in Public Law 94-142 (amended by PL 101-76), ‘specific learning disability’ means a disorder on one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using spoken or written language. This may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, spell, or do mathematical calculations.

The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children whose conditions are primarily caused by visual hearing, or motor problems; mental retardation; emotional disturbance; or due to environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Matt Ritchel and Michel Martin on the Adolescent Mental Health Crisis in the United States

[This post appears to have drawn a lot of attention, so I’m moving it to the top of the site for another week so it’s easy to find.]

Last Friday evening, as I am wont to do at the end of the week, I was watching the week’s YouTube clips on the shows I follow. I stumbled across this clip from Amanpour and Company featuring Michel Martin and Matt Richtel discussing the adolescent mental health crisis in the United States. It served as a bracing reminder to me (which I seriously needed) of what young people have endured, and continue to experience, during the pandemic and after. Mr. Richtel, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has been researching and writing on the inner experiences of contemporary teenagers in a series in the The New York Times headlined “The Inner Pandemic.” If you’re dealing in any capacity with adolescents, I can say with considerable confidence that you won’t regret the twenty-minute or so investment of time this video requires.

Term of Art: Teacher-Proof Curriculum

“teacher-proof curriculum: A curriculum that is presumably so well designed and so carefully scripted that it cannot be ruined by a mediocre teacher. Some curriculum designers have pinned their hopes on computer-programmed instruction as a possible teacher-proof curriculum that cannot be distorted even by poor teaching. Understandably, teachers find such curricula to be offensive and condescending. See also programmed learning.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

Term of Art: Spatial Sequencing

“spatial sequencing: Refers to the ability to recognize and organize objects in a pattern. For example, spatial sequencing is demanded in the copying of block patterns. Later, spatial sequencing is demanded in reading, in recognizing and interpreting the sequence of letters in words and the spaces between words. At this last level, the skill may be considered cognitive.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

Term of Art: Soft Neurological Signs

“soft neurological signs: Any of a number of minor abnormalities that emerge in childhood and are used as diagnostic indicators of minimal brain damage.

Soft signs are subtle and difficult to detect reliably; they tend to run their developmental course with no clear cause and are not regarded as indicators of any specific neurological disease. The soft in the term comes from the difficulties of interpretation and the uncertain association with structural brain damage.

Certain soft signs, like those related to fine and gross motor sills, may be used to help diagnose learning disabilities. Neuropsychological evaluations and psychological evaluations for learning disabilities typically include soft signs assessments such as the ability to walk a straight line, the ability to tell left from right, and the ability to track objects horizontally and vertically.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.