Term
| Differentiated Instruction (DI) |
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Definition
| Acknowledges that students differ in interests, learning profile, and level of functioning. |
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Term
| Individual Education Plan (IEP) |
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Definition
| A written plan developed for an exceptional student that describes the adaptations, modifications, and services to be provided. |
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Term
| Identification, Placement, and Review Committee (IPRC) |
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Definition
| In Ontario, this committee, consisting of the teacher, special educations, administrators, and parents, meets to consider whether a child is exceptional and recommends a placement prior to the IEP meeting. |
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Term
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Definition
| Changes to how a student is taught, including such things as teaching strategies, supports, and alternate formats, when the outcomes are consistent with the student's grade placement. |
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Term
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Definition
| Changes made to the content of the learning expectations, making them substantially different from the prescribed curriculum for the student's grade placement, and specifically selected to meet the exceptional student's needs in accordance with the IEP. |
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Term
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Definition
| A team of teachers, specialists, and administrators that problem solves about students experiencing academic or behaviour difficulties whether students should be individually assessed for an IEP |
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Term
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Definition
| A systematic strategy for adapting teaching to include exceptional learners consisting of five steps: Accounts of students' strengths and needs; Demands of the classroom; Adaptations; Perspectives and consequences; Teach and assess the match. |
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Term
| Developmentally Advanced/Gifted |
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Definition
| Exceptionally high abilities in one or several areas, including specific academic subjects, overall intellect, leadership, creativity, or the arts. |
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Term
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Definition
| Knowledge about our own thinking. |
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Term
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Definition
| Processes and knowledge, including vocabulary, verbal fluency, retention, generalizing, making abstractions, organizing, and planning. |
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Term
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Definition
| Students are given options for completing an assignment and decide how far to take their learning. |
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Term
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Definition
| The human mind's activity of taking in, storing, and using information. |
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Term
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Definition
| Learning disabilities in reading. |
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Term
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Definition
| Learning disabilities in writing. |
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Term
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Definition
| Learning disabilities in arithmetic, especially calculations. |
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Term
| Social Skills Difficulties |
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Definition
| A controversial aspect of learning disabilities, not present in all students with LD; for example, teachers report that most students with LD experience social skills difficulties and peers report that many have low social statuses; however, only a few children with LD report low social self-concept. |
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Term
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Definition
| A term that refers to the disability that is the source of an individual's challenges. |
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Term
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Definition
| Exceptionality that results from living with a primary disability in another aspect of one's life; for example, social skills difficulties that arise from being rejected as a result of having a disability. |
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Term
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Definition
| Our perceptions about ourselves |
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Term
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Definition
| Reading skill involving understanding the meaning of what has been read. |
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Term
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Definition
| Essential sense of what numbers mean, how to compare numbers, and how to see and count quantities in the world around us. |
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Term
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Definition
| A pervasive mood of unhappiness accompanied by long-term difficulties in sleeping, feelings of worthlessness, and inability to experience pleasure. |
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Term
| Mode/Method of Presentation |
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Definition
| The means used to communicate information to students, including oral, visual, video-recorded demonstration, live demonstration, and hands-on techniques. |
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Term
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Definition
| A method of directing students' attention to specific aspects of the learning environment. |
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Term
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Definition
| Learning aids that tell students what to study for a test and can enable them to be more efficient in their preparation; they include outlines, abstracts, and questions that emphasize important information in texts. |
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Term
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Definition
| Plans and processes designed to accomplish learning or solve problems. |
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Term
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Definition
| Characterized by ignoring details, making careless errors, having trouble concentrating, and staying on task while working or playing. |
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Term
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Definition
| Characteristics include blurting out answers before the teacher has finished asking a question, not waiting for one's turn, and interrupting other students. |
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Term
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Definition
| Characterized by fidgeting, squirming, moving constantly, talking excessively, and finding it challenging to play or work quietly. |
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Term
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Definition
| Teachers or peers can make the invisible visible by verbalizing their thoughts and showing students how to use a strategy, solve a problem, etc. |
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Term
| Cognitive Behaviour Management (CBM) |
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Definition
| Programs that teach students how to use cognition to control their behaviour by using self-talk and self-instruction. |
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Term
| Speech and Language Exceptionalities |
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Definition
| Problems encountered in the oral production of language and/or impairment in the use or comprehension of spoken language that interfere with communication. |
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Term
| Negative Psychological States |
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Definition
| Often seen in students with behavioural and emotional exceptionalities; include anxiety, depression, and stress-related disorders. |
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Term
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Definition
| Risk factors often experienced by students with emotional and behavioural exceptionalities, including delinquency, substance abuse, and neglect. |
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Term
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Definition
| Behaviours that exemplify the relations of an individual's emotional needs to the social environment. |
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Term
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Definition
| The expectation, based on previous experiences with a lack of control, that all one's efforts will lead to failure. |
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Term
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Definition
| Areas of participation in the life of the community in which individuals with development disabilities may be delayed: communication, home living, community use, health and safety, leisure, self-care, social skills, self-direction, functional academics, work. |
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Term
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Definition
| A secondary school program intended to prepare adolescents for entering the workforce rather than for formal post-secondary education. |
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Term
| Lower Reading Level Materials |
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Definition
| Text materials that parallel required or recommended text but are written at a lower reading level and are more accessible to those reading below grade level. |
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Term
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Definition
| A range of conditions restricting physical movement or motor abilities as a result of nervous system impairment, musculoskeletal conditions, or chronic medical disorders. |
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Term
| Chronic Health Conditions |
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Definition
| A qualified medical practitioner has certified that a student requires medical procedures, excluding administration of medication only, to ensure the health and safety of the student while in school or requires ongoing special education interventions due to the student's education performance. |
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Term
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Definition
| Person responsible for ensuring that the various services required by an exceptional student are coordinated; sometimes parents assume this role. |
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Term
| Developmental or Cognitive Disabilites |
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Definition
| The development of cognitives abilities and adaptive behaviours at a much slower rate than normal, which results in significant limitations in these areas at mild and severe levels. |
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Term
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Definition
| Outcomes for a student are based on life skills such as shopping, banking, and cooking. |
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Term
| Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) |
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Definition
| All of the disorders that are considered ASDs are characterized by varying degrees of impairment in three areas: communication skills, social interactions, and repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour. The five disorders in the autism spectrum are autism, Asperger Syndrome (AS), Rett syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS). |
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Term
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Definition
| Describe a situation from the perspective of a student, direct the student to do the appropriate behaviour, and are in the first person; developed by Gray (2002) for children with autism. |
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Term
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Definition
| Consequences that cause a behaviour to increase. |
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Term
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Definition
| Severe and sustained impairment in social interaction with restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities, with no significant delays in language acquisition, or cognitive development. |
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Term
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Definition
| The tendency to be extremely sensitive to sensory stimuli such as touch and to engage in unusual behaviour to obtain a particular sensory stimulation. |
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Term
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Definition
| Characterized by hearing loss that interferes with the acquisition and maintenance of the auditory skills necessary to develop speech and oral language and causes one to use visual sources of information to replace hearing. |
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Term
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Definition
| Partial hearing loss that interferes with the acquisition and maintenance of the auditory skills necessary to develop speech and oral language; use visual sources of information to supplement or replace hearing. |
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Term
| American Sign Language (ASL) |
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Definition
| A manual language system that has its own rule-governed syntactic system. |
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Term
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Definition
| Learning materials children can handle to aid learning, such as counters when adding in arithmetic |
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Term
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Definition
| The technique of preparing exceptional students, frequently used with students who are deaf or hard of hearing, by teaching them the vocabulary and concepts prior to introducing new material to the entire class. |
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Term
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Definition
| The process of enhancing sounds, usually through the use of hearing aids or FM (frequency modulation) systems. |
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Term
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Definition
| Disability characterized by partial or complete loss of sight and use of auditory and tactile sources of information to supplement or replace sight. |
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Term
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Definition
| A system of raised dots that can be read by touch by persons who are blind. |
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Term
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Definition
| A technique of reading books onto audiotape so they can be used by person who are print-disabled, usually people who are blind or have learning disabilities in the area of reading (dyslexia). |
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Term
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Definition
| Describes equipment that responds to the human voice, usually computer equipment used by individuals with visual impairments. |
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Term
| Nervous System Impairment |
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Definition
| Results of damage or dysfunction of the brain or spinal cord that may have occurred before, during, or after birth; examples of exceptionalities are cerebral palsy, spina bifida, epilepsy, Tourette syndrome, brain injury, and fetal alcohol syndrome. |
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Term
| Acquired/Traumatic Brain Injury |
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Definition
| Damage to brain tissue as a result of a blow to the head or an accident that can cause physical difficulties (e.g., paralysis) and cognitive problems. |
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Term
| Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders |
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Definition
| Physical and physiological abnormalities due to prenatal exposure to alcohol causing delays in development, central nervous dysfunction, and a characteristic pattern of facial features, and learning problems. |
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Term
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Definition
| Chronic health conditions that affect the muscles and the skeleton and that can affect all aspects of a student's life (e.g., muscular dystrophy and juvenile arthritis). |
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Term
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Definition
| A qualified medical practitioner has certified that a student requires medical procedures, excluding administration of medication only, to ensure the health and safety of the student while in school or requires ongoing special education interventions due to the student's limited school attendance or because the condition adversely affects the student's education performance. |
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Term
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Definition
| A ration package containing juice, raisins, or dextrose, often carried by an individual with diabetes and sometimes kept in a central location in a school to be used by students with diabetes in an emergency. |
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Term
| Anaphylaxis/Anaphylactic Shock |
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Definition
| A sudden, severe allergic reaction that causes breathing difficulties; death can occur within minutes unless an injection is administered. |
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Term
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Definition
| Teaching and learning approaches that allow students to gain access to, practise, or demonstrate learning of the curriculum in alternative ways. |
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Term
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Definition
| Intensive instruction, to address basic skills in an area in which a student has needs, that can be carried out with an individual or a small group in the classroom or in a resource room. |
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Term
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Definition
| An approach for education gifted students that allows them to move through the curriculum in an area of strength at an accelerated pace or to work at the next grade level. |
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Term
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Definition
| The cognitive demands made of the learner by teaching and learning in the classroom. |
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Term
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Definition
| Learning activities close to real-world tasks, usually involving problems that are engaging, contextualized, and represent those expected in the adult world. |
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Term
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Definition
| The extent to which students embrace learning and throw themselves into the activities of the classroom. |
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Term
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Definition
| Support for learning and problem solving; can be clues, reminders, encouragement, breaking the problem into parts, or anything that enables a student to grow in independence as a learner. |
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Term
| Scaffolding Reading Experience (SRE) |
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Definition
| Designed for classes with students of varying abilities in reading, it involves teachers in ADAPTing the three steps of pre-reading, reading, and post-reading activities by providing varying degrees. |
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Term
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Definition
| The practice of deliberately placing students in learning or working groups, used extensively in co-operative and collaborative learning approaches. |
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Term
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Definition
| Reading comprehension is an active process of understanding that requires an intentional and thoughtful interaction between the reader and the text. |
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Term
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Definition
| A teaching approach that involves enabling students to teach one another by taking turns leading discussion in small groups; usually the teacher models how to lead the discussion and provides scaffolding for the groups as they begin. |
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