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.

Habits of Mind An individual’s likelihood of using thinking skills to solve a problem when presented with one.

Habituation When an individual maintains the same response to a stimulus that is given repeatedly.

Habituation/Dishabituation The process used in infant learning of introducing a new stimulus to attract the child’s attention. After an object becomes more familiar, the infant becomes disinterested but becomes engaged again with the introduction of a different object or stimuli.

Hackathon I am sure that you have heard this term before, but unless you work in the tech industry, you probably don’t know exactly what it means. I mean on the face of it, the term sounds sexy and cool, but what exactly does it mean and what does it encompass

Handwriting The formation of letters while writing by hand.

Head Start A federal program that offers comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to children who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Healthy Perfectionism A beneficial trait that spurs someone to greater accomplishments through high levels of effort. This is sometimes referred to as normal perfectionism.

Herring Bone Technique A strategy designed to help students organize information in a text using a structured outline based on six basic comprehension questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Heterogeneous Grouping A teaching strategy which groups students of different ability levels.

Heteronomous Morality The stage in Piaget’s theory of moral development in which children believe rules to be immutable and that they will thus be punished automatically for breaking them.

Heteronyms A type of homograph that are identical in spelling, but have different meanings and are pronounced differently.

Hidden Curriculum The hidden curriculum refers to the unspoken, yet apparently prevalent inclusion of views that tend to support the continued existence and maintenance of the dominant or upper class. Critical theory advocates that to prevent the advancement of the hidden curriculum to the detriment of the lower classes, schools use officially sanctioned textbooks that are unbiased regarding views that will promote or maintain the dominant or upper class. Also, teachers are expected to encourage students to voice their beliefs about their values, rather than those that are simply popular.

Hierarchy of Intelligence A hierarchical theory of intelligence which places general intelligence at the highest level of the three, broad factors in the middle level, and specific skills at the bottom level.

High Poverty School A school where at least three-quarters of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

High School Typically covers grades 9 to 12. High school courses carry Carnegie Units (CUs), and students are required to accumulate a prescribed number before they are allowed to graduate. A CU is a measure of the amount of time a student studies within a course. Most courses carry 1 CU. Some electives, however, only carry half a unit. The number of CUs needed to graduate varies by state and by district.

Higher Education Education that takes place after the high school level.

Highly Qualified Teacher Refers to a status given to teachers in content areas upon completing coursework and/or passing a Praxis exam or its equivalent. The No Child Left Behind Act required that teachers be highly qualified in their content area.

HighScope Preschool Programs Are popular in community-based programs like local community centers or the YMCA. It focuses on academic learning by providing children opportunities to learn academic skills such as counting and telling time.

High-Stakes Tests Are assessments that have a high-impact outcome, where, for example, passing the test would allow the student entry into a grade or permission to graduate. Ultimately, students’ futures rely on these standardized test scores. Some subjects, such as foreign languages and humanities, are not included in the tests.

Hit Rates An important measure for screening that provides an indicator of the accuracy of the screening measure.

Holistic Rubric A rubric that uses descriptors to assess levels of competency. The rubric summarizes student performance in a single score.

Holistic Scoring An assessment method which evaluates writing based on an overall standard for the piece as a whole.

Holistic Scoring Scoring in which a single score is provided based on the rubric for an answer or project. Holistic scoring does not provide the detailed level of diagnostic information that analytic scoring does, but it can be easier to design this type of rubric and grade assignments using this method.

Holographic Stage The earliest stage of oral language development in which a single word is used to represent an idea.

Holography Holography was just science fiction a few years ago, but it’s now becoming a reality in some fields, such as medicine. This imaging technique, which allows one to see a 3-D view of an image, has yet to become a part of everyday classroom activities. Holography introduced in classroom activities would change entirely how some subjects are taught. Biology, physics, astronomy, and chemistry could be taught on an entirely different level.

Holophrases A single word that represents an entire phrase.

Home-Based Reinforcement Strategies Methods for effective behavior modification in which a student’s behavior in school is reported to his or her parents who then reward such behavior.

Home-Based Strategies A form of intervention where professionals regularly come to the child’s home to assist the caregiver with the prescribed treatments and activities.

Homeschooling The process of educating children inside of your home, instead of relying on a traditional school environment. Homeschooling can be conducted by a parent, tutor, or online instructor. Discontent with traditional schools is the impetus for the popularity of homeschooling. The advent of the Internet has been one of the leading drivers behind this popularity. Apart from discontent over the perceived lack of effectiveness in traditional schools, parents may choose to homeschool their children for other reasons, including perceptions that traditional schools are unsafe and a desire for religion to be a larger part of their children’s education than is possible in public schools.

Homogeneous Grouping A process in which educators assemble students by need, ability, or interest.

Homogeneous Grouping A teaching strategy that groups students of the same or similar ability level together.

Homographs Words that are identical in spelling, but have different meanings and may be pronounced differently.

Homonyms Words that are identical in spelling and sound alike but have different meanings.

Homophones Words that sound alike but are often spelled differently, and have different meanings and origins.

Human Sentence Processing Mechanism (HSPM) Could be responsible for our ability to process sentences. The Human Sentence Processing Mechanism is believed to be genetically predetermined.