Pre-K to 2 nd Grade Vocabulary…

Pre-K to 2nd Grade Vocabulary… That Every Parent and Stakeholder Should Know

Accommodation • The process of altering existing schemes or creating new ones in response to new information.

Assimilation • Fitting new information into existing schemes.

Attention • Focus on a stimulus; also, the awareness of and interest in phenomena.

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) • The current term for disruptive behavior disorders marked by overactivity, excessive difficulty sustaining attention, or impulsiveness.

Autism • A development disorder of communication and perception identified before age three.

Autonomy • Independence

Blended Families • Parents, children, and stepchildren merged into families through remarriages.

Cognitive Development • Changes in problem solving, memory, language, reasoning, and other aspects of thinking.

Comprehension • The understanding and comprehending of what is read.

Decoding • ability to apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words.

Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) • Educational materials and practices that are adapted to fit the emotional, physical, and cognitive characteristics and needs of children at different stages.

Differentiation • The process of specialization of embryonic cells to perform particular functions.

Emotional Self-Regulation • The quality that enables individuals to remain focused on goals, even in the face of difficult and stressful circumstances. It involves effortful, voluntary control of emotions, attention, and behavior.

Emotional/Social Development • Changes over time in an individual’s feelings, personality, self-concept, and relations with other people.

Extended Families • Family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins living in the same household, or at least in daily contact with each other, cooperating to take care of children.

Fine Motor Skills • Small muscle movements that are more limited and controlled (e.g., eating with a fork or spoon, tying shoelaces, cutting with a pair of scissors).

Fluency • The ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression.

Gross Motor Sills • The movement of the large muscle groups.

Individual EducationPlan (IEP) • An IEP defines the individualized objectives of a child who has been found with a disability, as defined by federal regulations. The IEP is intended to help children reach educational goals more easily than they otherwise would.

Learning Communities • Groups of teachers and students who care about and support one another to learn. They share goals and values and have a group identity.

Learning Disability • Disorders that involve central processing problems and affect the ability to understand or use spoken or written language, do mathematical calculations, coordinate movements, or direct attention.

Metacognitive Skills • Skills to self-regulate based on knowledge about our own thinking processes.

Phonemes • The individual sounds in spoken words. Phonemes are the smallest units comprising spoken language. Phonemes combine to form syllables and words.

Phonemic Awareness • the specific ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.

Phonics • Phonics instruction helps children learn the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. Children are taught, for example, that the letter n represents the sound /n/, and that it is the first letter in words such as nose, nice and new.

Phonological Awareness • Phonological awareness is a broad skill that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language – parts such as words, syllables, and onsets and rimes. Children who have phonological awareness are able to identify and make oral rhymes, can clap out the number of syllables in a word, and can recognize words with the same initial sounds like 'money' and 'mother.'

Scaffolding • Support for learning and problem solving. The support could be clues, reminders, encouragement, breading the problem down into steps, providing an example, or anything else that allows the student to grow in independence as a learner.

Syntax • The order of words in phrases or sentences.

Vocabulary • Vocabulary refers to the words children must know to communicate effectively. In school terms, it can be described as oral vocabulary or reading vocabulary.

Validity • The degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure.

Pre-K to 2 nd Grade Vocabulary…