Glossary of Terms

A

Academically Engaged: When students are participating in activities/instruction in a meaningful way and understanding the tasks in which they are involved.

Accuracy: (part of fluency) Reading words in text with no errors. Accuracy can be measured with running records.

Adaptive Reader: A reading platform or software that changes to meet the specific needs of each student or group of students through the difficulty of the material, interest of the student, and specific needs identified by the instructor.

Analyze: To break material down into its constituent parts and determine how the parts relate to one another and to the overall structure or purpose of the text(s).

Articulation: The formation of clear and distinct sounds in speech.

Asynchronous learning: To learn on one’s own schedule but within a certain timeframe.

B

Blending: The task of combining sounds rapidly, to accurately represent the word.

C

Cloze: Cloze reading procedure involves removing words from a sentence or paragraph and having the student infer meaning from the context in order to supply the appropriate missing words to create meaningful text. At the lower grades, a list of missing words, in random order, is often provided for the student.

Compose: Arrange ideas and details in a clear and coherent way to create an effective message.

CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

D

Decode: To analyze (break down) spoken words or graphic symbols/units of a familiar language to discover their intended meaning.

Denotation: The general or literal meaning of a word (e.g., home is a place where a person lives.)

E

Emergent Reader Texts: Texts consisting of images, images with a single word or phrase, and/or short sentences made up of learned sight words and CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words; may also include rebuses (a picture that represents a word or word part) within the text to represent unfamiliar words.

Evaluate: To make judgments about the value of ideas, purposes, or claims of a text based on criteria and standards.

F

Five Components of Reading: Identified by the National Reading Panel report in 2000: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Fluency: The ability to read words, phrases, sentences, and stories correctly, with enough speed, and expression.

G

Genre: Category used to classify literary works (books, stories, poetry, etc.) by content, form, or technique.

L

Lexile Framework: An educational tool to match readers with books, using quantitative methods, based on individual words and sentence lengths.

Literacy: The ability to read and write well.

M

Modeling: Demonstrating a strategy, skill, or concept that students will be learning.

Morphology: The study of word formation patterns.

N

Non-fiction: Prose writing based on facts or real events, such as historical or biographical writing.

P

Phoneme: An individual sound unit of speech.

Phonemic Awareness: The ability to identify and play with individual sounds in spoken words.

Phonics: Reading instruction based on how letters and groups of letters link to sounds to form letter-sound relationships and patterns for spelling.

R

Reading Assessment: Follows a prescribed format for administration and scoring. Scores obtained from formal tests are standardized, meaning that interpretation is based on norms from a comparative sample of children.

Reading Comprehension: The ability to understand what you are reading.

S

Semantics: The part of language that has to do with the meaning of words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs.

W

Word Awareness: Having the ability to separate words in a spoken sentence, can be developed in your children before they start school.

Wordless Books: Books that contain no body text, offering opportunities for emergent readers and English language learners to learn about storytelling, sequence, and structure without needing to read text.