Tag Archives: cognition/learning/understanding

Term of Art: Strategy

“strategy: A plan or tactic to solve a problem or carry out a decision. In education, a strategy refers to almost anything that a teacher or a student does in the classroom—asking a question, reading a story, figuring the meaning of a word, planning the next day’s lesson, and so on.”

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

Term of Art: Semantic Memory

“semantic memory: Memory for facts, such as the information that would be contained in a dictionary or encyclopedia with no connection to time or place. People do not remember when or where they learn this type of information.

Semantic memory registers and stores knowledge about the world in the broadest sense; it allows people to represent and mentally operate in situations, objects, and relations in the world that are not present in the senses. A person with an intact semantic memory system can think about things that are not here now.

Because semantic memory develops first in childhood, before episodic memory, children are able to learn facts before they can remember their own experiences.

The seat of semantic memory is believed to be located in the medial temporal lobe and diencephalic structures of the brain.”

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

The Weekly Text, 13 December 2024: A Lesson Plan on Boxing Weight Divisions from The Order of Things

This week’s Text, from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s excellent reference book The Order of Things, is a lesson plan on boxing weight divisions. And here is a list as reading and five comprehension questions that serves as the reading and writing work for this lesson. Keep in mind, as I mention each time I publish one of these lessons, that this work is designed for students who struggle with understanding information presented in two symbolic information systems–in this case numbers and letters. Think of students who struggle with word problems in math classes, and you’ll have a clear idea whose confidence this relatively simple work is meant to bolster.

As this material deals with boxing–specifically the amateur boxing weight divisions used in the Olympics–I believe it will be of high interest to students, so I have tagged it as such.

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: Strand

“strand: A group of related themes or concepts within an overall curricular area. For example, a social studies curriculum might be divided into such strands as citizenship, history, economics, geography, legal systems, political systems, and so on.”

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

Term of Art: Semantic Knowledge

“semantic knowledge: Data stored in long-term memory regarding general information and concepts.”

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

Term of Art: Semantic Cueing

“semantic cueing: A strategy used to help an individual retrieve or read a word by giving hints with words of similar meaning. For example, it an individual is trying to remember the word compliment, giving the semantic cue praise may help make a meaningful connection to the word in question.

Similarly, cueing can be used to help an individual read an individual word. For example, if a reader stumbles on the word psychologist, an instructor may give the semantic cue a therapist or a doctor for your mind rather than providing a phonetic or decoding cue, such as ‘psych is pronounced sike.’”

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

Term of Art: Story Seeds

“story seeds: Ideas around which a student might build a story. Every story, for example, involves a conflict, so a teacher should provide a student with a conflict as a story seed and have the student create the setting, the characters, the incident that starts the conflict, and so on.”

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

The Weekly Text, 26 July 2024: A Lesson Plan on Motion Picture Genres from The Order of Things

Once again, from Barbara Ann Kipfer’s sublime reference book The Order of Things, here is a lesson plan on motion picture genres. To deliver this lesson (and bear in mind that any lesson under the heading of The Order of Things on this blog was designed for emergent and struggling readers as well as students of English as a new language) you will need this worksheet with reading and comprehension questions.

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: Social Skills Training

“social skills training: A type of behavioral therapy in which a therapist describes and models appropriate behaviors (such as waiting for a turn, sharing toys, asking for help, or responding to teasing). Through role-playing, a child has the opportunity to practice these skills in a therapeutic setting.”

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

Term of Art: Social Skills Problem

“social skills problems: Children with a learning disability (especially nonverbal disabilities) may have trouble with social skills as a result of problems with perception. Children in this situation tend to be isolated, with few close friends, and only rarely participate in school activities. They are often rejected by children their own age because of odd behavior or poor school performance.

Teachers tend to rate these children as being easily led and with poor social adjustment. These problems may be caused by poor social comprehension, the inability to understand another’s point of view, poor language skills, or misinterpretation of body language.”

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