Knowledge in one academic field of study, or profession. A discipline incorporates experts, discourse, habits of mind, communities, inquiry, and research areas that are connected with academic areas of study, or areas of professional practice.
Academic Discourse
Communication of thoughts through words, talk, conversation, and/or formal discussion on a topic.
Academic Rigor
High levels of thinking and engagement with learning, in-depth mastery of complex texts and tasks, and metacognitive behavior about performance and learning in the classroom.
Academic Vocabulary
Words that are not used in everyday conversation and are most often used in academic text and dialogue.
Accountable Talk
A form of academic and productive talk that involves accountability to the learning community, to quality reasoning, and to knowledge.
Andragogy
The science of adult learning.
Apprenticeship
The process of mentoring students in discipline-specific learning with the teacher as the facilitator, modeling, monitoring, and scaffolding student learning.
Argument Writing
Writing to support claims in an analysis of topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and efficient evidence.
Assessment
The process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data about student achievement, planning instruction, and improving student performance.
Aural Vocabulary
The words one understands when listening to others speak.
Authentic Assessment
Assessment tasks that take place in the classroom and resemble reading and writing in the real world and in school.
Close Reading of Text
A form of guided instruction that focuses on multiple readings and rich discussion about a short, complex piece of text.
Cognitive Rigor
The expectation that students will develop deep understanding of complex content to be able to deeply interact with it.
Collaborative Inquiry
A process through which students come together to carefully and critically examine their own knowledge, thinking, questions, or steps to problem-solving.
Collaborative Learning
An instructional approach in which two or more students come together to work on, or learning something, together.
College and Career Readiness
College and career readiness refers to the content knowledge, skills, and habits that students must have to be successful in postsecondary education, or in training that leads to a career.
Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
New rigorous academic standards in mathematics and English language arts (ELA) and literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices.
Complex Questions
Questions that do not have a single answer and whose answers require a critical thinking and reflection.
Comprehension
A complex, interactive process of constructing meaning from text.
Comprehension Strategies
Tools to help students access text, engage with text, and construct meaning from text.
Cooperative Learning
An instructional technique that uses small, heterogeneous groups of students working together to maximize their own and each other’s learning.
Critical Literacy
The ability to read texts and multi-media in a reflective way that promotes a deeper understanding of power, inequality, and injustice in human relationships.
Deep(er) Learning
Learning that leads to transfer of knowledge in new contexts.
Digital Writing
Writing that involves the use of digital tools for composing, creating, and publishing ideas.
Disciplinary Literacy
Reading, thinking, inquiring, speaking, writing, and communicating required for learning discipline-specific knowledge.
Disciplinary or Discipline-Specific Literacy
Reading, thinking, inquiring, speaking, writing, and communicating required for learning discipline-specific knowledge.
Discourse
The language used to communicate thoughts and ideas orally and in writing, to understand, construct, and generate knowledge in a social context.
Essential Questions
Questions that probe for deeper meaning of concepts and ideas and promote further questioning.
Explicit Instruction
A systematic, direct, engaging, and success-oriented way for teaching academic skills.
Fluency
The ability to read accurately, easily, and with prosody.
Formative Assessment
The process of providing students during instruction with feedback about their progress toward meeting a goal and adapting instruction to meet their needs.
Gradual Release of Responsibility Model
An instructional learning framework developed by Pearson and Gallagher (1983) during which students learn new knowledge and skills from the teacher through modeling and scaffolding and gradually assume increased responsibility, and eventually independence, for learning.
Habits of Mind
Thinking practices, dispositions, or ways of inquiring and problem solving of disciplinary experts.
Informative/Explanatory Writing
Writing used to describe, offer information, explain, or inform in an accurate manner.
Inquiry
The process of seeking information, knowledge, and truth.
Leadership Teams
Groups of educators working together to analyze and interpret data for the purposes of helping teachers make informed instructional decisions, and monitoring student progress.
Learning Goal
A statement of what students need to understand and be able to do.
Lesson Study
A type of cyclical and highly effective professional development process of systematically studying, analyzing, and reflecting on teacher practice for the purpose of improving it.
Lexile Measure
A valuable piece of information about either an individual's reading ability or the difficulty of a text. Lexile measures are expressed as numeric values with an "L" after it. 750L is 750 Lexile and is placed on the Lexile scale.
Metacognition
Awareness of one’s cognitive processes, including task knowledge and self-monitoring of activity.
Narrative Writing
Writing that conveys fiction or nonfiction experiences, and is used to inform, instruct, or entertain.
New Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
New rigorous science standards to help students become proficient in science.
New Literacies
The knowledge, skills, strategies, and dispositions needed to use and adapt to the changing nature of information and communication technologies in the 21st century.
On-Demand Writing
Writing to a specific prompt, within a limited amount of time, and scored with a rubric.
Professional Development
Activities designed to enhance teachers’ professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will result in improved student learning.
Professional Learning Community (PLC)
A job-embedded learning process in which educators practice collaborative inquiry on an ongoing basis for the purpose of improving teaching practice and student learning.
Qualitative Dimensions of Text Complexity
Levels of meaning or purpose, text structure and patterns, language conventionality and clarity, and knowledge demands.
Quantitative Dimensions of Text Complexity
Word length or frequency, sentence length, text cohesion.
Question-Answer-Relationships (QAR)
A framework for helping students learn how to self-question using different types of questions (i.e., Right There, Think and Search, Author and Me, and On My Own).
Question Formulation Technique (QFT)
An approach to teaching students to formulate their own questions.
Questioning the Author (QtA)
An approach for engaging students with text and helping them to construct meaning from the text.
Readability
The attempt to match the student’s level of reading with understanding and the reading level of a text.
Reciprocal Teaching
A dialogue-based instructional approach between teacher and students for the purpose of comprehending text through predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing.
Response to Intervention (RtI)
A multi-tiered approach to early identification and support of students with learning and behavior needs.
Rigorous Instruction
Instruction that is purposeful, interactive, relevant, promotes inquiry, evidence-based thinking and metacognitive skills, is reflective, supportive, and results in transfer of learning.
Socratic Seminar
A form of cooperative learning, named after Socrates, that uses the power of open-ended questions, critical thinking, articulation of one’s personal thoughts, and civil response to others’ ideas.
Standardized Tests
Formal tests administered to specific directions; usually norm-references and machine-scored.
Teacher Evaluation Frameworks
Frameworks designed to develop common definitions and understanding of excellence in teaching.
Test Structure
The way in which authors organize information in text.
Text Coding
A strategy used to help students keep track of thinking while they are reading through, marking the text, and recording what they are thinking either in the margins, or on post-it notes.
Text Complexity
Refers to qualitative and quantitative factors, text factors, and reader characteristics.
Text-Dependent Questions
Questions that take the reader back to the text.
Tier One Words
Basic, familiar, everyday words that need little instruction in meaning.
Tier Three Words
Domain-specific words that are not commonly generalizable and are best learned in the context of each discipline.
Tier Two Words
General academic vocabulary students will encounter in different classes and will learn through reading text and explicit instruction.
Writing from Sources
Analytical writing connected to literary and informational texts, writing arguments and informational reports from sources.