Education A to Z

Education and Curriculum Terms: A Guide for Students and Teachers

Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.

Revising? We write GCSE revision songs — a playlist covering most subjects and the English set texts. Listen to the revision playlist.

500 terms, showing 161–170 (page 17 of 50).

F

Fieldwork

Collecting your own data outside the classroom, and being examined on how you did it.

Flashcards

Also called Cue cards, Leitner system, Anki

Question on one side, answer on the other. Simple, well-evidenced, and easy to use wrongly.

Flooding

Why rivers flood, and the choice between hard and soft management.

Food chains and ecosystems

What eats what, and where the energy goes.

Food safety and hygiene

Keeping food safe: the temperatures, the cross-contamination rules and the hazards.

Forces and motion

What makes things speed up, slow down or stay put. Newton's three laws in usable form.

Foreshadowing and suspense

Planting a hint of what is coming, and making the reader wait for it.

Form

Also called Free verse, Dramatic monologue, Ballad

The kind of poem it is, and the shape it takes on the page.

Formal elements

Line, shape, tone, texture, pattern, colour and form. The vocabulary for describing any image.

Free early education

Government-funded hours for young children, and how entitlement has expanded.

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