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.

Syllable Juncture The place in a word at which two syllables come together. Researching different types of syllable junctures assists readers in understanding how to decode/read words.

Syllables The large parts of a word.

Syllabus An outline of the curriculum and specific topics that will be covered in a particular course. The syllabus is disseminated by the instructor before the course begins or during the initial course meeting.

Symbol Systems Any structure of standard visual signs intended for communication. Examples include letters, numerals, and ideographs.

Symbolic Analogy A problem-solving technique in which participants are challenged to generate a two-word phrase related to the design problem being considered and that appears self-contradictory. The process of brainstorming this phrase can stimulate design ideas.

Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) The component of the autonomic nervous system that governs a person’s response to stress, triggering the flight-or-fight response – increased heart rate, the release of adrenaline, slowed digestion, pupil dilation, etc.

Synapse Electrical connections between neurons that build up as a result of experience.

Synchronous Elearning Elearning that takes place within the classroom and is synchronized with classroom activities.

Synergistic Mean The ability to put two unrelated things together and make them more than the sum of their parts. One aspect of leadership.

Synetics The combining of two unrelated attributes or elements.

Syntactic System The set of rules and interacting patterns of the language concerned with the order of words in a sentence, punctuation placement, and capital letter use to help readers decipher the grammatical structure in a text and apply that knowledge for word recognition and comprehension.

Syntax The rules by which words are grouped into phrases and sentences that convey meaning.

Synthesizing Summarizing text by combining and connecting the ideas of several different selections through the use of students’ interpretation of the material.

Systematic Transcription Linguists and phoneticians use systematic transcription as a form of documentation for typical, common, or standard realizations of speech. This form of transcription may be phonetic (capturing allophonic variations or phenomes in a language) or phonemic (capturing the phenomes in a language) in nature. Phonemic transcription is written within slashes // or virgules as opposed to the brackets [] used with phonetic transcription.

Systematically Planned A principle of the constructivist classroom where teaching is based on proactive planning.