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.

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.