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.

Loan A form of financial aid that is comprised of monies that are given to a student for a period of time to assist them in paying for college and related fees. The monies have to be paid back at a later date.

Locational Skills Also referred to as work-study skills, these are the sets of abilities that are assessed on many standardized achievement tests.

Loci Method A technique that assists in remembering lists by visualizing the items within familiar locations.

Locus of Control A personality trait that determines whether people ascribe responsibility to internal or external factors when it comes to understanding their successes and failures.

Logic Clue A type of context clue that gives a common-sense link to an unknown word.

Logic Is the branch of philosophy that seeks to organize reasoning. Students of logic learn how to think in a structurally sound manner. Logic has two types: deductive and inductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning involves examining a general case, deducing a general set of rules or principles, and then applying these rules to specific cases. Inductive reasoning involves taking specific examples and considering the general principles, rules, or cases that caused them.

Logical Thinking An individual’s capacity to separate relevant from irrelevant facts and use them to deduce well-reasoned conclusions.

Logical Thought The capability of using significant information to make choices or solve a problem.

Logical/mathematical Intelligence The ability to identify numerical patterns and think abstractly.

Long vowel A vowel that produces the sound of its letter name. We usually teach long vowels after short vowels because, even though it is much easier to hear the vowel sounds, the spelling patterns are less expectable than short vowel patterns.

Long-Term Memory The area of the brain that has a large capacity to store memories. Long-term memory varies significantly by age with increased capacity over time. This increased capacity to retain new information is thought to be the result of the abundance of material that is already stored and can be easily associated with the new information.

Looping The teaching method of having a teacher move through ages or grades with the same students for two or more years.

LSAT (Law School Admission Test A uniform lay school entrance exam, which is managed by the nonprofit Law School Admission Council, which measures reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, and logical reasoning skills. There is an unscored writing component that is forwarded to the law schools that the student applies to.

Lyric Summaries A teaching idea in which students, in small groups, list what they think is the most important information they have learned. Each group uses their list to write a summary which becomes the new lyrics to a song the group has chosen. The group then sings their Lyric Summary for the class.