Acronyms Abound!

As we spoke with teachers during our Back-to-School meetings in early September, we got a sense that everyone's head was spinning with the number of new acronyms being tossed into conversations, presentations and videos. It reminded me of the Wordles our students create by inputting text and seeing the artwork, or "word cloud" it creates with their words. The more times a word is entered the more prominence it is given in the Wordle. Each time I heard an acronym mentioned I added it to a Google doc. (Another term that has been thrown around as well!) Then I added the terms a few more times to reflect the importance of these terms in the life of the educators in our building this year. As we continued to meet over and spoke about these terms during ATMs and informal conversations we all agreed that an acronym glossary wouldn't be a bad idea! 

Here is what we've come up with so far...

CCSS

Common Core State Standards

...provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.

EBSR

Evidence-Based Selected Response

The term refers to a type of ELA/literacy (PARCC) test item that asks students to

show the evidence in a text that led them to a previous answer.

ELA

English Language Arts

...Reading, Writing, Speaking & Listening, Language

F&P

Fountas & Pinnell

Fountas and Pinnell's work is rooted in the work of Marie Clay whose meticulous study of the complexity of the reading process, through detailed coding of thousands of readings, showed that when a text is too difficult for the child the process breaks down and the child does not develop inner control of effective actions for processing texts. Fountas and Pinnell's goal is to support the child's development of self-initiating actions he will be able to apply to a range of texts of similar difficulty. With daily teaching, the teacher helps the child climb the ladder of text difficulty with success. When the text poses enough challenge, but not too much, the child has opportunities with effective, explicit teaching to build his network of effective problem solving actions.

OEQ

Open-Ended Question

Open-ended questions are questions that do not have a single correct answer.  They require students to read a passage, then come up with details from the passage to help answer the question.  

PARCC

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers is a group of states (currently 18, plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands) working together to develop a common set of computer-based K–12 assessments in English language arts/Literacy and math linked to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The PARCC assessments will be ready for states to administer during the 2014-15 school year.

PBA

Performance Based Assessment

...assessment activities that directly assess students’ understanding and proficiency. These assessments allow students to construct a response, create a product, or perform a demonstration to show what they understand and can do. Because they call for students to apply knowledge and skills rather than simply to recall and recognize, performance-based assessments are more likely to reveal student understanding. They are well suited to assessing application of content-specific knowledge, integration of knowledge across subject areas, and lifelong learning competencies such as effective decision making, communication and cooperation (Shepard, 1989). On the PARCC assessment, PBAs in math will focus on reasoning and modeling and include questions that require both short and extended responses. In ELA/literacy, the PBAs will focus on both reading comprehension and writing when

analyzing texts.

PBL

Problem Based Learning

...is a learning system that recognizes the need to develop problem solving skills and helping students to earn necessary knowledge and skills. It is in the process of dealing with real problems that students learn both content and critical thinking skills. Using PBL, students obtain life long learning skills and the ability to find and use appropriate learning resources.

PCR

Prose Constructed Response

This term refers to a specific item type on the PARCC ELA/literacy assessments in which

students are required to produce written prose in response to a test prompt. These measure reading and writing claims.

SAM

Scholastic Achievement Manager

The Scholastic Achievement Manager (SAM) is the comprehensive online management system for SRI. SAM collects and organizes student performance data and AYP accountability requirements, and supports district-wide aggregation for teachers, district administrators, and technology coordinators. SAM includes over 70 reports to help monitor student performance and grading.

SGO

Student Growth Objective

A Student Growth Objective is a long-term academic goal that teachers set for groups of students and must be:

• Specific and measurable;

• Aligned to New Jersey’s curriculum standards;

• Based on available prior student learning data; and

• A measure of what a student has learned between two points in time.

SGP

Student Growth Percentiles

This score compares a student’s academic growth on the NJ ASK from one year to the next to the growth made by that student’s academic peers (students from around the state with similar test score histories).

SRI

Scholastic Reading Inventory

... is a computer-based reading assessment that provides immediate, actionable, data on students. reading levels and growth.

STEM
Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics
...a major component of 21st century education

TECR

Technology-Enhanced Constructed Response

This ELA/literacy item uses technology to capture student comprehension of texts in authentic ways that have been historically difficult to capture using current assessments. Examples include using drag and drop, cut and paste, and highlight text features

UbD

Understanding by Design

UbD promotes a “backward” design process that begins with identifying the enduring understandings that students should carry from the class. With UbD, anticipated results are first identified; acceptable evidence for learning outcomes is established and, only then, are specific learning experiences and instruction planned.