You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means
-Inigo Montoya
All professionals use a specific vocabulary in their field. Educators use particular terms to describe their field. Speaking the language helps. One error we made early in our lives at advocates for our child was we went in asking that she be allowed to learn math at a pace more quickly than the pace her class was moving. When you have a particular speed at present, and you increase that speed, that’s acceleration, right? It turns out that asking to accelerate my child in math was asking for something very different than we were asking for. The school heard the term accelerate and applied their specific meaning to the word, instead of listening to the words around the request, which should have been obvious that we were asking for something they actually call differentiation and compaction. Because of the error in our vocabulary, we were left to endure an increasingly hostile and difficult meeting in which little was accomplished. Had we known that acceleration meant something different to the educators in the room, I would have not spoken the word, and hopefully that conversation would have gone better.
So, for you dear readers, some vocabulary:
Differentiation: This means altering lessons to meet the child’s needs formally or informally. Informally, a child with a higher reading level can have his reading instruction differentiated by being provided books written at a higher level and taught to comprehend the text at a deeper level. Not all spelling lists have to be the same for all children. Published curricula generally come with differentiated materials for the teacher. These materials generally differentiate down two grade levels (that is, a 5th grade teacher’s materials would accommodate a child working at a 3rd grade level) and up one grade level (that is, that same curriculum package would give the teacher materials for a child working at a 6th grade level). I’m not certain if teachers are aware of the degree of differentiation, and many curricula make it somewhat difficult for the teacher to actually provide those materials to a student. The existence of differentiated materials is a the reason why schools don’t always see the need to adjust grade placement, as the teacher ought to be able to provide differentiated materials for a child working above grade level.
Compaction: Compaction is doing the content of a class at a faster pace than typical. Many gifted math programs will do a year of covering the late elementary grade more quickly than typical. For instance, a gifted class may do 4th, 5th, and 6th grade math in 4th and 5th grades, allowing for these children to do prealgebra as 6th graders.
Other programs might cover the content of a middle school class social studies in the first semester and then address other subjects not typically addressed in a middle school curriculum.
Acceleration: This is skipping a year of content. When skipping a year of a particular subject, this is called a single-subject acceleration. “Skipping a grade” is whole-grade acceleration.
A post on the pros and cons of each of these interventions will come later. I also promise to provide more edu-speak decoder rings.
For those reading along, what terms have tripped you up?