Tag Archives: cognition/learning/understanding

Term of Art: Spatial Judgement

“spatial judgment: The ability to judge spatial relationships, as between fixed objects or between a moving object and a fixed point. Spatial judgment is involved in activities such as driving a car or playing a sport. Individuals with learning disabilities may have problems with spatial judgment as part of an overall pattern of difficulty with visual-spatial abilities.”

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

The Weekly Text, 26 August 2022: Concrete (adj), Abstract (adj)

This week’s Text is a context clues worksheet on the use of concrete as an adjective. For the purposes of the context of the sentences here, students are looking for a meaning of “characterized by or belonging to immediate experience of actual things or events,” “specific,” “particular,” “real,” and  “tangible.”

Opposing concrete, both in this post and in meaning, is this context clues worksheet on the adjective abstract. The sentences in this document provide context for an understanding of the definition of this word as “disassociated from any specific instance,” “difficult to understand,” “insufficiently factual,” : “expressing a quality apart from an object <the word poem is concrete, poetry is ~>,”  “dealing with a subject in its abstract aspects,” and “having only intrinsic form with little or no attempt at pictorial representation or narrative content.”

These are obviously important learning words across domains of knowledge–and particularly in the humanities. I cannot imagine teaching poetry, to offer one obvious example, without students understanding fully the meanings of these two words–and what they represent in the use of language.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Term of Art: Spatial Ability

“spatial ability: The ability to imagine objects or symbols in space.”

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

Term of Art: Teachable Moment

“teachable moment: A confluence of experience and instruction that suddenly awakens student interest and gives life to what is taught. A teachable moment may occur as the result of a current event, of a school or classroom occurrence, or of something that happened to a student or a teacher. Suddenly, a concept that once seemed abstract becomes clear and important. Teachable moments may also occur between parents and children, as parents teach spontaneous everyday lessons about behavior, morals, ethics, and values.”

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

Term of Art: Structural Analysis

“structural analysis: A type of word recognition that identifies structural features such as syllables, prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Other structural elements include compound words (sunshine) and contradictions (do not).

A reader may use a combination of structural analysis and context clues to identify an unfamiliar word. Individuals with learning disabilities benefit from the explicit teaching of structural analysis skills in order to improve spelling and reading comprehension.”

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

Term of Art: Task-Oriented Learning

“task-oriented learning: A learning approach in which students are expected to complete specific assigned jobs, or tasks, to gain mastery. Advocates of task-oriented instruction laud it because it is experiential and hands-on, as opposed to instruction that relies on books and lectures.”

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

Thomas Edison on the Labor of Thought

“There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.”

Thomas Edison

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

Norman Cousins on Facts and Interpretation

“Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead.”

Norman Cousins “Freedom as Teacher” (1981)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

Term of Art: Spelling

“spelling: Word in the English language can be difficult to learn to spell because of many irregular spelling patterns. For example, do, due, and dew are all pronounced exactly the same way but differ in meaning. While English has 44 sounds, it has only 26 letters.

The letter-sound correspondence is essential for reading, as is the sound-letter correspondence for correct spelling. A difficulty in these relationships results in language disabilities.

Spelling a word id fare more difficult than reading a word for several reasons. First, passive (receptive) skills such as reading tend to be easier than active, expressive skills such as spelling. In addition, there are not contextual or structural cues to help with spelling as there are for reading. While spelling can be difficult for average learners, in is particularly difficult for individuals with a weakness in decoding.”

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

Postmodernism

They’re very likely something nobody at the elementary or secondary level needs, but here nonetheless are a reading on postmodernism and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The one-page reading does a nice job of explaining what, for me, has always been a slippery concept. So if you’re teaching some or any of the authors discussed in this reading–among others you’ll find Thomas Pynchon, Italo Calvino, Toni Morrison, and Jean Rhys mentioned here–these documents probably aren’t of, uh, surpassing use to you.

On the other hand, as the reading points out, postmodernism is “notoriously difficult to define, whether in reference to literature, art, or anything else….” So there is the question of semantics to entertain here; a point of debate might be “Is there a stable definition of ‘postmodernism’ with concrete applied examples of the word?” Another might be an assertion in the reading, mostly accurate in my understanding of postmodernism, that the doctrine (such as it is) prescribes a view of the world that that “secure truths [do] not exist and that the world was therefore hopelessly fragmented.” That’s a grim assessment in many respects; but how, if at all, has it lent credibility to and generally abetted tyrants around the globe who began almost immediately, after a former president of the United States began flogging the term, began proclaiming most journalism (or journalism that doesn’t flatter the supreme leader) “fake news”? There, I think, is another point for debate.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.