To be considered a competent educator, there are almost 2000 strategies, concepts, and terms that you must know. However, since teachers wear so many hats, who has the time to learn them all? Don’t worry; we have you covered. In this series, we will discuss all the teaching and learning strategies, concepts, and terms that you need to know to be considered an effective educator. There are over 70 articles in this series, so pace yourself. We recommend reading one piece per weekday, which will allow you to complete the series in three to four months. We hope you enjoy it.
Click here to read all the articles in this series.
Evaluating A reading comprehension strategy that involves making judgments both during and after reading an expository or narrative text. The issues mostly focus on whether the author’s message is consistent and whose perspective is presented in the text.
Evaluation A comprehensive assessment of a student’s strengths, weaknesses and intervention needs which is conducted by a professional to create a student-specific strategy for remedying weaknesses and addressing needs.
Evaluative Mean The ability to weigh the importance of and evaluate the approach of various programs or activities. One aspect of leadership.
Evaluative Portfolio Storage of a sample of a student’s work to assess progress.
Evaluative Questioning The type of questioning that gives students a format to express ideas created by Ciardiello in 1998. It can also be used to defend, judge, or justify our way of thinking.
Event Sampling A written record kept by the teacher of skills or behaviors he or she wants the students to exhibit in the classroom.
Example/Illustration Clue A type of context clue that provides a picture or model for the meaning of a word.
Excellence versus Equality The conflict in education between striving to allow exceptional students reach their highest potential versus focusing resources on giving all students equal opportunities.
Executive Functions Higher order brain functions needed to plan, focus attention, prioritize and multi-task. These functions are critical to goal-oriented behavior.
Exhibition The display of samples of student work.
Existentialism Promotes attentive personal consideration about personal character, beliefs, and choices. The primary question existentialists ask is whether they want to define who they are themselves, or whether they want society to define them. Although freedom and individuality are highly valued American principles, existentialists argue that there is an underlying message of conformity. Rather than the belief that the mind needs to understand the universe, existentialists assume that the mind creates its universe. Their beliefs incorporate the inevitability of death, as the afterlife cannot be experienced personally with the current senses, focusing on the fact that the experience we have of the world is temporary and should be appreciated as such.
Exit Exam An assessment that students must pass to pass a course, be promoted to the next grade level or receive a diploma.
Expectancy clues The concepts and any associated words which may come to a person’s mind for a given topic. In other words, the schema that is triggered from a person’s memory when he/she encounters new material.
Expectancy Theory A theory of motivation premised on the notion that the propensity for individuals to achieve and perform depend on their expectations of reward.
Expectancy-Valence Model A theory that associates motivation with the likelihood and incentive value of success.
Experience-Text-Relationship Method A reading strategy which aims to help students relate their personal experiences to the main events in a story through various stages: discuss experiences (experience step), read the text (text step), and connect the experiences to the story (relationship step).
Explicit A principle of a constructivist classroom where teachers intentionally demonstrate the knowledge and skills that students will need to become more effective readers.
Explicit mean In QARs, the quality associated with answers to questions that are stated literally and can be located directly in the text.
Explicit Questions Questions that are straight from the text, the reader can go back and find the answer word-for-word.
Exploratory Play When a child discovers how materials work through play.
Expository Material Sources of content that is explanatory, such as some information found in content-area reading.
Expression Style A student’s preferred mode of response (oral, written, project-based, etc.)
Expressive Communication Conveying a message to another person using spoken or written words, non-verbal cues, and symbols.
Expressive Communication The process of communicating an idea to another person through spoken language, nonverbal cues or symbols.
Expressive Language Is the ability to wield vocabulary and weave words together into sentences to get your point across. It covers literacy and communication (asking for things, making comments, getting people’s attention). People with expressive language disorder have difficulty expressing their thoughts and ideas.
Extended Discourse A back-and-forth communication providing both sides of the dialogue with opportunities to hear and be heard through explanations and personal narratives.
Extending Students’ Thinking Encouraging students to integrate their thoughts and extend what they learned to other subject areas after reading.
External Control The sense that an individual has no control over their own success or failure and that outcomes are determined by luck, chance, task difficult or unfair teachers. Individuals who believe in external control are not likely to learn from mistakes or to try harder after a failure.
External Locus-of-control An individual’s perception that they have no control over their life and the world around them. That outcomes are based on luck, are the fault of others or chance.
Externalizing Behavior When children act on their emotions with behaviors such as hyperactivity, impulsivity, aggression, defiance, and noncompliance.
Externalizing Behaviors Outwardly directed responses to problems a student is having trouble facing including disruptive and antisocial behaviors.
Extinction A part of the Behavioral Theory where the eradication of a particular behavior no longer requires reinforcement.
Extinction Burst An increase in the levels of a particular behavior undergoing the early phases of extinction.
Extinction The withdrawal of reinforcement techniques for certain learned behavior, resulting in the weakening and eventual elimination of the behavior.
Extracurricular Activities Are school-sponsored clubs, sports, and activities that are outside the realm of the basic academic courses.
Extreme Rebellion An underachiever’s focus of blame on the school or an authority figure, outlining points of failure in detail to avoid taking responsibility for their outcomes.
Extrinsic Motivation An individual’s ability to focus effort on a goal in pursuit of an external reward.
Eyewitness Account A teaching tool in which students write, as if they were present at a specific event, through in-depth research that, as much as possible, places the writer in that moment.
