- Phonological awareness
- The broad ability to hear and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language — words, syllables, onset-rime, and phonemes — entirely by ear, without print.
- Phonemic awareness
- The narrowest level of phonological awareness: hearing, identifying, and manipulating individual phonemes; the strongest early predictor of reading success.
- Phoneme
- The smallest unit of sound in a spoken language that can change a word's meaning, such as /b/ in bat versus /c/ in cat.
- Grapheme
- A letter or group of letters that represents a single phoneme, such as 'sh' in ship or 'igh' in night.
- Alphabetic principle
- The understanding that letters and letter patterns (graphemes) represent the sounds of spoken language (phonemes) in a systematic, predictable way.
- Phonics
- Instruction in the systematic relationships between graphemes and phonemes so students can decode (read) and encode (spell) words.
- Decoding
- Translating printed words into speech by applying letter-sound knowledge; the word-recognition side of reading.
- Encoding
- The reverse of decoding — translating spoken sounds into written letters; spelling.
- Onset
- The initial consonant sound(s) of a syllable before the vowel, such as /str/ in 'strap'.
- Rime
- The vowel and any consonants that follow it within a syllable, such as /ap/ in 'strap'.
- Phoneme blending
- Combining individual spoken sounds into a word (/c/ /a/ /t/ → 'cat'); a core phonemic-awareness skill tied to decoding.
- Phoneme segmentation
- Breaking a spoken word into its individual sounds ('cat' → /c/ /a/ /t/); a core phonemic-awareness skill tied to spelling.
- Phoneme deletion
- Removing a sound from a spoken word to make a new word (say 'smile' without /s/ → 'mile'); an advanced phonemic-awareness skill.
- Syllable
- A unit of pronunciation containing one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants; the basis of the six syllable types.
- Closed syllable
- A syllable ending in a consonant with a single short vowel (cat, napkin); the most common syllable type.
- Open syllable
- A syllable ending in a vowel, which is usually long (go, hi, pa-per).
- VCe (silent-e) syllable
- A vowel-consonant-silent-e pattern where the final 'e' makes the preceding vowel long (cake, hope) — the 'magic e'.
- Vowel team syllable
- A syllable where two vowels together spell one vowel sound (rain, boat, week) — digraphs and diphthongs.
- R-controlled syllable
- A vowel followed by /r/ that makes a sound neither long nor short (car, bird, hurt) — the 'bossy r'.
- Consonant-le syllable
- A final stable syllable of a consonant plus -le (table, little, candle).
- Digraph
- Two letters that together represent one phoneme (sh, ch, th, wh, ck).
- Blend (consonant cluster)
- Two or three consonants whose individual sounds are each heard (bl, str, mp) — unlike a digraph, which is one sound.
- Morpheme
- The smallest unit of meaning in a language — a root, prefix, or suffix (un-, happy, -ness).
- Morphology
- The study of how morphemes combine to form words; supports decoding and the meaning of longer words.
- Orthography
- A language's writing system — its spelling rules and conventions for representing spoken sounds in print.
- Sight words
- Words a reader recognizes instantly without sounding them out, including high-frequency and irregularly spelled words.
- High-frequency words
- The most common words in print (the, of, and, said); taught for instant recognition because they appear constantly.
- Concepts of print
- Early understandings about how print works: it carries meaning, is read left-to-right and top-to-bottom, and has features like words, letters, and spaces.
- Print awareness
- Recognizing that print carries meaning and has specific functions — a foundational pre-reading concept.
- Fluency
- Reading text with accuracy, an appropriate rate, and prosody (expression); the bridge between decoding and comprehension.
- Automaticity
- Fast, effortless, accurate word recognition that frees a reader's limited attention to focus on meaning.
- Prosody
- The rhythm, stress, phrasing, and intonation of oral reading — reading 'with expression' that reflects comprehension.
- Repeated reading
- Re-reading the same text several times with feedback to build fluency; a research-based fluency method.
- Guided oral reading
- Reading aloud with a teacher who provides modeling and feedback; an effective way to build fluency, per the National Reading Panel.
- Structured literacy
- An explicit, systematic, cumulative approach that directly teaches language structure (phonology, sound-symbol, syllables, morphology, syntax, semantics).
- Systematic phonics
- Phonics taught in a planned, cumulative scope and sequence from simpler to more complex patterns — more effective than incidental phonics.
- Multisensory instruction
- Teaching that simultaneously uses visual, auditory, and kinesthetic-tactile pathways (e.g., Orton-Gillingham) to reinforce learning.
- Onset-rime awareness
- Splitting a syllable into its onset and rime (/c/ + /at/); a phonological-awareness level between syllables and phonemes.
- Grapheme-phoneme correspondence
- The matching of a letter or letter pattern to its sound; the core mechanic of phonics and the alphabetic principle.
- Word recognition strand
- In the Simple View / Reading Rope, the decoding side — phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition — that becomes increasingly automatic.
- Simple View of Reading
- Reading comprehension is the product of decoding and language comprehension (RC = D × LC); if either factor is near zero, comprehension collapses.
- Language comprehension
- Understanding spoken and written language through vocabulary, background knowledge, syntax, and verbal reasoning — one strand of the Simple View.
- Reading comprehension
- The active, constructive process of building meaning from text by integrating textual information with background knowledge — the goal of reading.
- Vocabulary
- Knowledge of word meanings and strategies to learn new words; a major driver of reading comprehension.
- Tier 1 vocabulary
- Common, everyday conversational words most students already know (dog, run, happy).
- Tier 2 vocabulary
- High-utility academic words that recur across many texts (analyze, reluctant); the priority for explicit vocabulary instruction.
- Tier 3 vocabulary
- Low-frequency, domain-specific words (photosynthesis, isotope) best taught within a content area.
- Context clues
- Information in surrounding text that helps a reader infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word — a key word-learning strategy.
- Background knowledge (schema)
- What a reader already knows about a topic; it supports inference and is itself a comprehension strategy.
- Schema theory
- The view that readers comprehend by activating organized mental structures of prior knowledge and integrating new text into them.
- Inference
- A conclusion drawn by combining text clues with background knowledge — reading 'between the lines'.
- Literal comprehension
- Understanding information stated directly in the text — the 'right there' level of comprehension.
- Inferential comprehension
- Reading between the lines to understand what the author implies but does not state directly.
- Evaluative comprehension
- The critical level — judging and reacting to a text by assessing the author's purpose, bias, or argument.
- Text structure
- How an author organizes ideas — cause-effect, compare-contrast, problem-solution, sequence, description; knowing it aids comprehension.
- Narrative text
- Story-structured text organized by setting, characters, plot, problem, and resolution (literary text).
- Expository text
- Informational text that explains or informs, organized by structures like cause-effect or compare-contrast.
- Comprehension monitoring
- The metacognitive habit of noticing when meaning breaks down and using a fix-up strategy (reread, ask, look back).
- Summarizing
- Condensing a text to its main ideas and key details; a research-based comprehension strategy.
- Questioning (QAR)
- Generating and answering questions about a text; Question-Answer Relationships teach where answers come from (in the text vs. in your head).
- Visualizing
- Forming mental images while reading to deepen understanding and retention — a comprehension strategy.
- Predicting
- Using text clues and prior knowledge to anticipate what comes next, then confirming or revising while reading.
- Activating prior knowledge
- Calling up what a reader already knows about a topic before reading to support comprehension.
- Graphic organizer
- A visual tool (web, Venn diagram, story map) that helps students organize information and see text structure.
- Syntax
- The rules governing how words combine into phrases and sentences; syntactic awareness helps readers parse meaning.
- Syntactic awareness
- Sensitivity to the grammatical structure of sentences, which helps readers anticipate words and comprehend.
- Semantic cues
- Meaning-based information a reader uses to make sense of text — does this word make sense here?
- Morphemic analysis
- Using roots and affixes to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word — a vocabulary strategy (e.g., 'unhappiness').
- Word consciousness
- An awareness of and interest in words and their meanings that motivates vocabulary growth.
- Reciprocal teaching
- A structured comprehension routine in which students take turns leading predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing.
- Screening assessment
- A brief, first-pass measure given to all students to flag who may be at risk; it identifies, it does not diagnose.
- Diagnostic assessment
- An in-depth measure given to flagged students to pinpoint the specific skill deficit so instruction can target it.
- Formative assessment
- Ongoing assessment used to guide instruction while learning is happening — assessment FOR learning.
- Summative assessment
- Assessment that evaluates learning after it has occurred against a standard — assessment OF learning.
- Progress monitoring
- Frequent, brief assessment (often curriculum-based measurement) that tracks growth and checks whether instruction is working.
- Curriculum-based measurement (CBM)
- Brief, standardized measures of progress in basic skills, given frequently to graph growth toward a goal.
- Running record
- A coded record of a student's oral reading used to set a reading level and analyze miscue patterns.
- Miscue
- A deviation from the printed text during oral reading — a substitution, omission, insertion, or self-correction — analyzed for cueing systems.
- Miscue analysis
- Examining a reader's errors to see whether they over-rely on graphophonic, syntactic, or semantic cues.
- Informal reading inventory (IRI)
- An individually administered assessment that establishes a student's independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels.
- Independent reading level
- Text a student reads with about 95–100% accuracy and strong comprehension — easy enough to read alone.
- Instructional reading level
- Text a student reads with about 90–94% accuracy — challenging but manageable with teacher support; the level for instruction.
- Frustration reading level
- Text a student reads below about 90% accuracy with poor comprehension — too hard for productive reading.
- Accuracy rate
- The percentage of words read correctly in a passage, used to set a student's reading level on a running record.
- DIBELS
- Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills — a widely used set of brief measures for screening and progress monitoring.
- Differentiated instruction
- Tailoring content, process, and product to students' varied readiness, interests, and needs, usually through flexible grouping.
- Flexible grouping
- Grouping students by current need based on data and regrouping as needs change — not fixed ability tracks.
- Multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS/RTI)
- A framework of increasingly intensive instruction — strong core (Tier 1), targeted (Tier 2), and intensive (Tier 3) intervention.
- Tier 1 (core instruction)
- High-quality, research-based reading instruction provided to all students in the general classroom.
- Tier 2 intervention
- Targeted, small-group instruction for students who need more than core to catch up.
- Tier 3 intervention
- Intensive, often individualized instruction for students with significant, persistent skill gaps.
- Zone of proximal development
- Vygotsky's gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with guidance; the target zone for instruction.
- Scaffolding
- Temporary instructional support gradually removed as a student gains proficiency, moving them through the ZPD.
- Gradual release of responsibility
- The 'I do, we do, you do' instructional model that shifts work from teacher modeling to independent student practice.
- Leveled text
- Text matched to a student's reading level so instruction targets the right challenge — neither too easy nor frustrating.
- Norm-referenced test
- A test that compares a student's performance to a representative norm group (e.g., percentile rank).
- Criterion-referenced test
- A test that measures performance against a fixed standard or criterion, not against other students.
- Validity
- The degree to which an assessment measures what it claims to measure.
- Reliability
- The degree to which an assessment produces consistent, repeatable results.
- Anecdotal record
- A brief, informal written observation of a student's reading behavior used as formative assessment evidence.
- Integration of Knowledge and Understanding
- Subarea IV of the Foundations of Reading test — the open-response assignments that apply the science of reading to assessment data.
- Open-response assignment
- A written task scored against a rubric (typically 1–4) that asks the candidate to analyze data and prescribe research-based instruction.
- Open-response stimulus
- The exhibit an open-response prompt provides — often a running record, assessment data, or a student work sample to analyze.
- Identifying the need
- The first step of a strong open response: naming the specific reading skill a student needs, based on the provided data.
- Citing evidence
- Pointing to the exact data or miscues in the exhibit that justify the identified need — vague claims lose points.
- Research-based strategy
- An instructional method supported by reading research (e.g., explicit phonics, repeated reading) prescribed in an open response to target a need.
- Performance scale (rubric)
- The 1–4 scoring guide trained scorers use to judge each open-response assignment for purpose, evidence, and application.
- Explicit instruction
- Teaching skills directly and clearly through modeling, guided practice, and feedback rather than expecting students to infer them.
- Systematic instruction
- Following a planned, cumulative scope and sequence that builds from simpler to more complex skills so gaps do not accumulate.
- Self-monitoring (cross-checking)
- A reader's habit of asking 'Does that make sense?' and self-correcting when meaning breaks down — a frequent open-response target.
- Data-driven instruction
- The principle, central to Subareas III–IV, that assessment evidence should determine what and how a teacher teaches next.
- Connecting strategy to principle
- Explaining why a prescribed strategy works by tying it to the reading-development principle it supports — what elevates an open response.
