A

Accommodations: A tool or procedure that provides equal access to instruction and assessment for students with disabilities.

ADHD: Short for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. A condition characterized by symptoms that include inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. But not all of these need to be present for a child to be diagnosed with ADHD.

Affect/learning environment: The effect of students' emotions and feelings on their learning—is another element of differentiated instruction. 

Assessment: Evaluations are used to identify a student’s strengths, weaknesses, and progress. These tests are designed to provide an overview of a child’s academic performance, basic cognitive functioning, and/or his or her current strengths or weaknesses; they can also test hearing and vision. 

Assistive technology: Any device or software that makes it easier to complete everyday tasks. For example, an app that lets you dictate a message into your phone instead of having to type the words can be considered assistive technology.

Auditory processing disorder: A condition in which a child has trouble accurately processing and interpreting information he hears. Often referred to as APD, this condition makes it difficult to recognize subtle differences in the way words sound. Kids with APD may have trouble filtering out background noise or listening to and following multi-step directions. Also called central auditory processing disorder.

B

Behavior intervention plan: A plan that includes positive strategies, program modifications, and supplementary aids and supports that address a student’s behaviors. 

C

Content: The knowledge, understanding, and skills that students need to learn (Differentiation)

D

Developmental Coordination Disorder:  This is a lifelong condition that makes it hard to learn motor skills and coordination. It’s not a learning disorder, but it can impact learning. Kids with DCD struggle with physical tasks and activities they need to do both in and out of school.

Differentiated instruction: A teaching approach in which lessons are presented in different ways to different groups of students in the class, depending on those students’ learning strengths.

Direct instruction: An instructional approach to academic subjects that emphasizes the use of carefully sequenced steps, including demonstration, modeling, guided practice, and independent application.

Dyscalculia: A specific learning disability in math. Kids with dyscalculia may have difficulty understanding number-related concepts or using symbols or functions needed for success in mathematics.

Dysgraphia: A specific learning disability in writing. Kids with dysgraphia may have difficulty writing legibly and at an age-appropriate speed. Many children with dysgraphia also struggle to put their thoughts down on paper. This is sometimes called a disorder of written expression.

Dyslexia: A specific learning disability in reading. Kids with dyslexia have trouble reading accurately and fluently. They may also have trouble with reading comprehension, spelling, and writing.

Dyspraxia: Sometimes called developmental coordination disorder. Kids with dyspraxia may have difficulty planning and performing tasks that require fine motor skills, such as writing, tying shoelaces, or using buttons or zippers.

E

Enrichment: Providing activities to enrich your child’s existing skills or knowledge in certain subjects or areas.

Evaluation:  An evaluation is a process that can help you better understand your child’s strengths,  challenges, and individual needs. An evaluation can help identify if your child has learning or attention issues that may cause him to struggle in school. The results of an evaluation help guide what supports and services your son needs. 

Terms you might hear in the process:

• Neuropsychological Evaluation: Focuses on how a child’s brain functions, and how that impacts learning and behavior. It involves a wide range of cognitive tests on learning issues, plus behavioral testing, and a look at academic performance. This formal assessment dives deeper than an Educational Evaluation.

• Psycho-educational Evaluation: Focuses on the child’s classroom and educational needs. It involves basic cognitive testing in areas like IQ and learning issues, with a look at academic performance.

• Educational Evaluation: How a child performs in school-related skills, based on age and grade.

• Speech and Language Evaluation: Focuses on a child’s spoken language as well as verbal and nonverbal communication skills.

• Occupational Therapy Evaluation: Focuses on a child’s motor skills, self-regulation, and visual sensory processing.

• Physical Therapy: Focuses on a child’s gross motor skills, like mobility, strength, balance, and coordination.

Executive Functioning Skills: Difficulty organizing oneself to accomplish tasks. Kids with these issues often have trouble planning ahead, prioritizing, self-correcting, starting or stopping activities, shifting from one task to another, and monitor one’s own behavior. Sometimes referred to as executive functioning disorder.

Expressive language: The aspect of spoken language that includes speaking and the aspect of written language that includes composing or writing. Kids with expressive language issues may have trouble finding the right word to say or may mix up past and present verb tenses. The term language disorder also covers these symptoms.

F

Flexibility: The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information, or mistakes. It relates to adaptability to changing conditions.

Formal assessment: The process of gathering information using standardized, published tests to make instructional decisions.

G

Graphic organizer: A text, diagram, or other pictorial device that summarizes and illustrates interrelationships among concepts in a text. Maps, webs, graphs, charts, frames, and clusters are graphic organizers.

H 

I

Instructional intervention: A change in the way a student is taught to try to improve learning and achieve adequate progress.

J

K

L

Language Disorder:  Is a communication disorder in which a person has persistent difficulties in learning and using various forms of language (i.e., spoken, written, sign language).

Learning Disability: Disorders that result in learning challenges that are not caused by low intelligence, problems with hearing or vision or lack of educational opportunity. Many children with learning disabilities have difficulties in particular skill areas, such as reading or math. These children may also have trouble paying attention and getting along with their peers. Often referred to as an LD. 

Learning Profile:  A learning profile is a document that helps teachers learn more about their students with learning needs. Learning profiles may include information such as:

• Diagnosis

• Skills, strengths, and interests

• Learning Challenges

• Recommendations for specific accommodations and supports

Teachers can use learning profiles to build effective relationships, develop an inclusive classroom, and understand what technology, differentiations, or accommodations may be needed for individual students.

Listening comprehension: Encompasses the multiple processes involved in understanding and making sense of spoken language. These include recognizing speech sounds, understanding the meaning of individual words, and/or understanding the syntax of sentences in which they are presented.

M

Manipulatives: Objects or materials students can touch and move around to make it easier to learn concepts in math and other subjects.

Metacognition: The ability to stand back and take a birds‐eye view of oneself in a situation. It is an ability to observe how you problem solve. It also includes self‐monitoring and self‐evaluative skills (e.g., asking yourself, “How am I doing? or How did I do?”).

Modifications: A change in what a student is taught or expected to learn. This term is used in Individualized Education Programs and 504 plans and is often paired with accommodations, which are changes that allow a student to more fully participate in learning.

Multisensory: An educational approach that uses visual, auditory  and kinesthetic-tactile cues to help students learn.  Using multiple senses gives students more ways to connect with what they’re learning. This type of hands-on learning can make it easier for students to:

• Collect information

• Make connections between new information and what they already know

• Understand and work through problems

• Use nonverbal problem-solving skills

N

Neurodiversity is a concept that means that brain differences are just that: differences. So conditions like ADHD are simply variations of the human brain based on your genes. For kids with learning and attention issues, the idea of neurodiversity has real benefits. It can help kids (and their parents) frame their challenges as differences, rather than as deficits. It can also shed light on instructional approaches that might help highlight particular strengths children have.

Neuropsychological Evaluation: Performed by Neuropsychologists who specialize in Neuropsychology, which is a field that focuses on understanding brain-behavior relationships and goes beyond school psychology and clinical psychology.  Neuropsychological Evaluations examine how a child’s brain functions and how that functioning impacts the child’s behavior and learning.  Neuropsychological Evaluations are typically much broader in scope than Psychological or PsychoeducationalEvaluations, and thus usually take longer to administer.  Neuropsychological Evaluations typically include assessments of intelligence and academic achievement, but also go even further to include formal assessments of the specific domains of cognitive functioning that are controlled by different regions of the brain, such as executive functioning, visual-perceptual abilities, information processing, attention and concentration, learning and memory, sensory perception, language, adaptive skills, and fine motor skills.  By examining a child’s underlying neurocognitive processes in greater detail, a NeuropsychologicalEvaluation can provide deeper insight into why students are having certain difficulties, what their learning strengths and weaknesses are, and what interventions can be used to successfully address their difficulties both in and outside of school.

O

Occupational Therapy: Focuses on a child’s motor skills, self-regulation, and visual sensory processing.

Organization: The ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information or materials. 

P

Planning/Prioritization: The ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task. It also involves being able to make decisions about what’s important to focus on and what’s not important.

Physical Therapy: Focuses on a child’s gross motor skills, like mobility, strength, balance, and coordination.

Process: How students come to understand and make sense of the content

Product: Ways for students to “demonstrate what they have come to know, understand, and be able to do after an extended period of learning” 

Psychoeducational Evaluation: Performed by school psychologists or other learning specialists who usually work directly in schools or have a background working in schools.  These evaluations typically include formal assessments of a child’s intelligence and a child’s academic achievement in addition to other assessments.  The testing usually does not take as long to administer as Neuropsychological Evaluations.  Psychoeducational Evaluations seek to understand a child’s learning style generally, and then guide the development of classroom accommodations and supports from an educational perspective. Psychoeducational Evaluations are generally not as broad in scope as Neuropsychological Evaluations, and usually do not include formal assessments of the specific domains of cognitive functioning (attention, memory, executive functioning, language, etc).  Because they are more limited in scope, PsychoeducationalEvaluations may not provide the level of data needed to fully assess, diagnose, and recommend treatment for disabilities involving language, attention, executive functioning, or other more complex social/emotional and learning-related difficulties.  They focus more on identifying the child’s difficulties in the classroom (i.e. what is happening) rather than examining the underlying brain origins and neurocognitive processes that are causing the child’s difficulties in the classroom (i.e. why it is happening).

Q

R

Reading comprehension: How well children understand what they read. This is closely related to listening comprehension, but some kids who struggle to follow a story that is read aloud do better when they read silently and vice versa.

Reading disability: Another term for dyslexia, sometimes referred to as reading disorder or reading difference.

Receptive language: The aspect of language that includes comprehending the meaning of speech. Kids with receptive language issues may have trouble following spoken directions, especially directions involving multiple steps or unfamiliar words. The term language disorder also covers these symptoms.

Remediation: Teaching and practicing specific skills to help your child catch up or get closer to grade level. Can focus on areas that are difficult for him or on skills he hasn’t yet mastered.

Response Inhibition: The capacity to think before you act – this ability to resist the urge to say or do something allows us the time to evaluate a situation and how our behavior might impact it. 

Response to Intervention: A comprehensive, multi-step process that closely monitors how the student is responding to different types of services and instruction. Often referred to as RTI.

S

Scaffolding: Temporary guidance or assistance provided to a student by a teacher, another adult or a more capable peer, enabling the student to perform a task. The goal is for the student to eventually be able to perform the task alone.

Self-advocacy: The skills and understanding needed to enable children and adults to explain their specific learning disabilities or needs to others.

Sensory Processing: Over- or under-responding to sensory information such as bright lights or unexpected sounds. Kids with sensory processing issues may have difficulty with changes in their daily routine, the tastes or textures of certain foods, or the feeling of certain fabrics on their skin. Sometimes referred to as sensory processing disorder.

Sensorimotor: Involving both sensory and motor functions. Also called “sensory-motor.” Kids need to be able to combine sensory information (such as what they see or touch) with movement in order to do things like balance on one foot or ride a bike.

Social-emotional learning (SEL): The process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success. People with strong social-emotional skills are better able to cope with everyday challenges and benefit academically, professionally, and socially.

Specific learning disability: A disorder—unrelated to intelligence, motivation, effort, or other known causes of low achievement—that makes a child struggle in certain areas of learning, such as reading, writing or doing math. Sometimes referred to as SLD.

Speech therapy: Sometimes referred to as speech/language therapy or SLT. This type of therapy is designed to help kids speak more clearly, express their thoughts and ideas and understand what other people are saying.

Slow Processing: ( See attached PDF) Slow processing speed is when people need a lot of time to take in, make sense of, and respond to information. The information can be visual, like letters or numbers. It can also be auditory, like spoken language.

Support: A combination of remediation and maintenance tutoring. Focuses both on trouble spots and on current work so that your child doesn’t fall further behind.

Sustained Attention: The capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue, or boredom.

T 

Task Initiation: The ability to begin projects without undue procrastination, in an efficient or timely fashion.

Time Management: The capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate it, and how to stay within time limits and deadlines. It also involves a sense that time is important.

Test Prep: Teaching skills and techniques for taking tests. Can be used for specific tests like the SAT, which involves learning content and the format of the test.

U

Universal Design: Universal Design is the design and composition of an environment so that it can be accessed, understood, and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, size, ability, or disability. 

V

Verbal comprehension: How well children understand the language they hear or read. This can be measured in a variety of ways, including kids’ ability to follow directions and distinguish between essential and nonessential information.

Visual processing issues: Difficulty processing or interpreting visual information. Kids with visual processing issues may have difficulty telling the difference between two shapes or finding a specific piece of information on a page. Sometimes referred to as visual processing disorder (VPD).

Visuomotor: Involving both visual and motor functions. Also called “visual-motor.” Kids need to combine movement with visual information to do things like catching a ball, cutting with scissors, or put puzzle pieces together. These skills are also called “hand-eye coordination.”

W

Word attack skills: The ways readers make sense of a new word they encounter in print. Strategies include recognizing the sounds of the letters and putting them together. More advanced readers also use context and other clues such as root words, prefixes, and suffixes to figure out what the new word means.

Working memory: The ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks. It incorporates the ability to draw on past learning or experience to apply to the situation at hand or to project into the future. A young child, for example, can hold in mind and follow 1‐2 step directions while the middle school child can remember the expectations of multiple teachers.  

X

Y

Z