Standards Glossary
The purpose of this glossary is to help the user better understand the terminology used in the Colorado Academic Standards. It is intended to assist educational practitioners and pre-service educators in understanding the standards. It is not intended as a study guide for students nor does it represent a comprehensive list of all academic terms.
Use the alphabetical list to view glossary terms by first letter.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
M -
- major scale
One of the diatonic scales. It is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth which duplicates the first an octave higher.
Content Area: Music
- make-up
Cosmetics applied to the face and body to enhance character.
Content Area: Drama and Theatre Arts
- manipulative movements
Movements in which skills are developed while using an implement: throwing, catching, punching, kicking, trapping, rolling, dribbling, striking, and volleying.
Content Area: Comprehensive Health and Physical Education
- map
A representation of Earth's surface.
Content Area: Social Studies
- map key
Explanatory table of symbols used on a map or chart.
Content Area: Social Studies
- market economy
An economic system where most goods and services are exchanged through transactions between households and businesses.
Content Area: Social Studies
- market system
Where money is used for exchange in place of goods and services.
Content Area: Social Studies
- mass media
Mass media refers to those media that are designed to be consumed by large audiences through the agencies of technology.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- material culture
A term that refers to the physical objects created by a culture. This could include the buildings, tools, and other artifacts created by the members of a society.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- materials
Resources used in the creation and study of visual art: paint, clay, paper, canvas, film, videotape, watercolors, wood, and plastic.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- maximum
The greatest value of a function or set of data.
Content Area: Mathematics
- mean
A measure of center in a set of numerical data, computed by adding the values in a list and then dividing by the number of values in the list; also known as the arithmetic mean. On a plot, the mean is a point on the number line where the data on either side of the point are balanced: for the data set {1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 22, 120}, the mean is 21.
Content Area: Mathematics
- mean absolute deviation
A measure of variation in a set of numerical data, computed by adding the distances between each data value and the mean, then dividing by the number of data values: for the data set {2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 22, 120}, the mean absolute deviation is 20.
Content Area: Mathematics
- measure of center
A single number used to summarize a one-variable data set. The mean, median, and mode are measures of center.
Content Area: Mathematics
- measures of variability
A single-number summary that measures the variability of a distribution. Range, interquartile range, standard deviation, and variance are measures of variability.
Content Area: Mathematics
- media
Plural of medium, referring to materials used to make art; categories of art: painting, sculpture, film.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- median
A measure of center in a set of numerical data. The median of a list of values is the value appearing at the center of a sorted version of the list—or the mean of the two central values, if the list contains an even number of values: for the data set {2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 22, 90}, the median is 11.
Content Area: Mathematics
- medium
Referring to a specific material used to make art. Categories of art: painting, sculpture, film.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- melody
A succession of pitches.
Content Area: Music
- mental health
A state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.
Content Area: Comprehensive Health and Physical Education
- mental strategies
Performing computations in one's head without writing anything down. Mental math strategies can include finding pairs that add up to 10 or 100, doubling, and halving.
Content Area: Mathematics
- metacognition
Awareness and understanding one's thinking and cognitive processes: thinking about thinking.
Content Area: Reading, Writing, and Communicating
- metaphor(s)
A figure of speech in which a word, phrase or visual ordinarily used for one thing is applied to another.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- meter
The division of beats into groups of beats.
Content Area: Music
- meter signature
Numbers placed at the beginning of a musical composition which indicate the division of rhythmic pulses.
Content Area: Music
- mezzo-forte
Moderately loud, between forte (loud) and piano ( soft) and a little louder than mezzo piano.
Content Area: Music
- mezzo-piano
Moderately soft, between forte (Italian: loud) and piano (Italian: soft) with mezzo piano being a little quieter than mezzo forte.
Content Area: Music
- midline
In the graph of a trigonometric function, the horizontal line halfway between its maximum and minimum values.
Content Area: Mathematics
- migration
The movement from one location to another.
Content Area: Social Studies
- mime
Act out movement or use of object without words or props in silence.
Content Area: Drama and Theatre Arts
- minimum
The least value of a set or function.
Content Area: Mathematics
- minor scale
One of the diatonic scales with a third scale degree at an interval of a minor third above the tonic.
Content Area: Music
- mirroring
A partner skill in which one person leads by performing movement and the other person imitates the leader’s movement simultaneously.
Content Area: Dance
- mixed economic system
Economic system that contains elements of traditional, command, and market decision making.
Content Area: Social Studies
- mixed number
Numbers that have both whole numbers and fractions: 4 5/8.
Content Area: Mathematics
- mixing
Putting instrumental and vocal components together with balance and in an organized manner.
Content Area: Music
- modalities
Specific methods or procedures to show understanding: written form, verbal form, visual form, physical form, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, acting.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- model
To represent or show mathematical ideas and relationships and real-world situations using objects, pictures, graphs, tables, functions, and other methods.
Content Area: Mathematics
- modeling
A sculptural technique manipulating a soft material into a three dimensional form. Monochromatic.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- moderate physical activity
On a scale relative to an individual's personal capacity usually a 5 or 6 on a scale of 0 to 10, meaning it requires sustained rhythmic movements and some exertion but a healthy person should be able to carry on a conversation comfortably during the activity: walking briskly, dancing, swimming, or bicycling on level terrain.
Content Area: Comprehensive Health and Physical Education
- moderato
Moderately; in moderate time.
Content Area: Music
- modern dance
A form of dance as developed by Martha Graham, Haya Holm, Doris Humphyre, Charles Weidman and others. It expresses complex emotions and abstract ideas.
Content Area: Dance
- modified game
Active games that involve the use of two or more of the skills, rules, or procedures used in playing the official sport to support differentiation and adaptation.
Content Area: Comprehensive Health and Physical Education
- monetary policy
The process a government, central bank, or monetary authority of a country uses to control (i) the supply of money, (ii) availability of money, and (iii) cost of money or rate of interest to attain a set of objectives oriented towards the growth and stability of the economy.
Content Area: Social Studies
- money
Any medium of exchange that has a standard of value, and a store of value.
Content Area: Social Studies
- monologue
A speech within a play delivered by a single actor alone on stage.
Content Area: Drama and Theatre Arts
- monopolistic competition
A market structure characterized by many firms producing differentiated products in a market with easy entry and exit.
Content Area: Social Studies
- monopoly
Control of the production and distribution of a product or service by one firm or a group of firms acting in concert; the absence of competition.
Content Area: Social Studies
- mood
The feeling or emotion a piece of literature evokes in the reader: happiness, sadness.
Content Area: Reading, Writing, and Communicating
- morphemes
The practice of identifying words by an analysis of the meaningful parts of those words.
Content Area: Reading, Writing, and Communicating
- motif
A dominant theme, idea, or pattern in a work of art. Motifs are often repeated.
Content Area: Dance
- motif
A repeated shape or design in a work of art. A design unit that may be repeated in a visual rhythm.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- motivation
1 A character's reason for doing or saying things in a dramatic or theatrical work. 2 What the character wants.
Content Area: Drama and Theatre Arts
- movement
A principle of design of visual arts. The use of art elements to draw a viewer’s eye through an artwork.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- movement
Dance specific movement is described in a variety of ways. 1 Continuity movement refers to the continuous passing of the feet from one step to the next. 2 Quality movement refers to the identifying attributes created by the release, follow-through, and termination of energy, which are key to making movement become dance. 3 Mechanical movement skills refer to aspects of balance, alignment, weight shift, elevation, landing, fall and recovery, articulation of isolated body parts, and initiation of movement. See also: locomotor, non-locomotor, sequence, basic, improvisation.
Content Area: Dance
- movement
Physical action used to establish meaning and emotion to create character including blocking, gestures, posture/stance, and whole-body movements.
Content Area: Drama and Theatre Arts
- movement
Flows of human phenomena, such as goods, people, and ideas, and with or natural phenomena: winds, rivers, and ocean currents.
Content Area: Social Studies
- movement
To move rhythmically, usually to music, using prescribed or improvised steps and gestures. Movement can be dance: folk, ballroom, ethnic or improvised or it can be a kinesthetic gesture indicating pitch, phrasing, form, dynamics, or other musical elements.
Content Area: Music
- movement concepts
The ideas used to modify or enrich the range and effectiveness of the skills employed. They involve learning how, where, with what, and with whom the body moves: levels, force and relationships.
Content Area: Comprehensive Health and Physical Education
- movement patterns
An organized series of related movements.
Content Area: Comprehensive Health and Physical Education
- movement techniques
Ways to incorporate movement in a dramatic or theatrical work which includes body alignment, control of isolated body parts, and rhythms.
Content Area: Drama and Theatre Arts
- multiple modalities
Several varying methods or procedures.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- multiple perspectives
Different or various points of view on a topic, idea or event.
Content Area: Social Studies
- multiplication and division within 100
Multiplication or division of two whole numbers with whole number answers, and with product or dividend in the range 0-100: 72 ÷ 8 = 9.
Content Area: Mathematics
- multiplicative identity
The number 1; that is, N x 1 = N for any number N.
Content Area: Mathematics
- mural
A painting, generally drawn or painted directly onto an interior or exterior wall: Michelangelo’s frescos at the Sistine Chapel are small ceiling murals, Diego Rivera’s mural at the Detroit Institute of Art.
Content Area: Visual Arts
- muscle endurance
The ability to contract the muscles many times without tiring or the ability to hold one contraction for an extended period.
Content Area: Comprehensive Health and Physical Education
- muscle strength
The ability of a muscle to exert force; generally measured as the amount of force a muscle can produce in one repetition.
Content Area: Comprehensive Health and Physical Education
- musical diversity
Music literature drawn from a variety of historical periods, world cultures, musical styles and forms.
Content Area: Music
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