READING & LANGUAGE ARTS GLOSSARY

Accuracy – or accuracy rate – The percentage of words the words the student reads aloud correctly.

Affix – A part added to the beginning or ending of a base or root word to change its meaning or function (a prefix or a suffix).

Alliteration – The repetition of identical or similar sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables, as in “Crazy clown climbed carelessly through cacti.

Alphabet book – A book that helps children develop the concept and sequence of the alphabet by pairing alphabet letters with pictures of people, animals, or objects with labels related to the letters.

Alphabetic principle – The concept that there is a relationship between the spoken sounds in oral language and the graphic forms in written language.

Analogy – the resemblance of a known word to an unknown word that helps to solve the unknown word’s meaning.

Animal Fantasy – A make-believe story in which personified animals are the main characters.

Automaticity – Rapid, accurate, fluent word decoding without conscious effort or attention.

Base word – A whole word to which affixes can be added to create new word forms (for example, wash plus –ing becomes washing).

Blend – To combine sounds or word parts.

Capitalization – The use of capital letters, usually the first letter in a word, as a convention of written language (for example, for proper names and to begin sentences).

Choral reading – To read aloud in unison with a group.

Compound word – A word made up of two or more words or morphemes (for example, playground). The meaning of a compound word can be a combination of the meanings of the words it contains or can be unrelated to the meanings of the combined words.

Comprehension – The process of constructing meaning while reading text.

Concept words – Words that represent abstract ideas or names. Categories of concept words include colors, numbers, months, days of the week, position words, and so on.

Consonant – vowel – consonant (CVC) A common sequence of sounds in a single syllable (for example, cat)

Consonant – A speech sound made by partial or complete closure of the airflow that causes friction at one or more points in the breath channel. The consonant sounds are represented by the letters b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, ,v x, z, and in most uses y.

Consonant blend – Two or more consonant letters that often appear together in words and represent sounds that are smoothly joined, although each of the sounds can be heard in the word (for example, tr, in trim)

Consonant cluster – A sequence of two or three consonant letters that appear together in words (for example, trim, chair)

Consonant digraph – Two consonant letters that appear together and represent a single sound that is different from the sound of either letter

(for example, shell).

Content – The subject matter of a text.

Contraction – A shortening of a syllable, word or word groups, usually by the omission of a sound or letters (for example, can’t)

Conventions – (in writing) Formal usage that has become customary in written language. Capitalization, punctuation, and grammar are the three categories of conventions in writing.

Critique – To evaluate a text using one’s personal, world,

or text knowledge, and to think critically about the ideas in the text.

Decoding – Using letter-sound relationships to translate a word from a series of symbols to a unit of meaning.

Dialogue – Spoken words, usually set off with quotation marks in text.

Directionality – The orientation of print. In the English language, directionality is from left to right.

English language learners – People whose native language is not English and who are acquiring English as an additional language.

Error – (in reading) A reader’s response that is not consistent with the text and that is not self – corrected.

Expository text – A composition that explains a concept, using information and description.

Fantasy – An imaginative, fictional text containing elements that are highly unreal.

Fiction  - An invented story, usually a narrative.

Figurative language – language that is filled with word images and metaphorical language to express more than a literal meaning.

Fluency – (in reading) The way an oral reading sounds, including phrasing, intonation, pausing, stress, rate, and integration of the first five factors. To read continuous text with good momentum, phrasing, appropriate pausing, intonation and stress.

Folktale – A traditional story, originally passed down orally.

Font  - In printed text, the collection of type (letters) in a particular style.

Form  - (as a text characteristic) A kind of text that is characterized by particular elements. Mystery, for example, is a form of writing within the narrative fiction genre.

Genre – A category of written text that is characterized by a particular style, form, or content.

Grammar – Complex rules by which people can generate an unlimited number of phrases, sentences, and longer texts in a language. Conventional grammar reflects the accepted conventions in a society.

Grapheme – A letter or cluster of letters representing a single sound or phoneme ( for example, a, eigh, ay)

High-frequency words – Words that occur often in the spoken and written language (for example, the)

Historical fiction – An imagined story set in the realistically (and often factually) portrayed setting of a past era.

Illustration – (as a text characteristic) Graphic representations of important content (for example, art, photos, maps, graphics, charts).

Independent reading level – The level at which a child reads the text with 95% or higher accuracy and excellent or satisfactory comprehension (levels A-K) or 98% or higher accuracy with excellent or satisfactory comprehension (levels L-Z).

Individual instruction – The teacher working with one child.

Infer – To go beyond the literal meaning of a text: to think about what is not stated but is implied by the writer.

Inflectional ending – A suffix added to a base word to show tense, plurality, possession, or comparison (for example, -er in darker).

Informational text – A category of texts in which the purpose is to inform or to give facts about a topic. Nonfiction articles  and essays are examples of informational text.

Insertion – (as an error in reading) A word added during oral reading that is not in the text.

Instructional reading level – At levels A-K, the level at which the child reads the text with 90-94% accuracy and excellent or satisfactory comprehension; or 95% or higher accuracy and limited comprehension. At levels L-Z, the level at which the child reads the text with 95-97% accuracy and excellent or satisfactory comprehension; or 98% or higher accuracy and limited comprehension.

Intervention – Intensive additional instruction for children not progressing as rapidly as expected; usually one-to-one tutoring or small group (one-to three) teaching.

Intonation – the rise and fall in pitch of the voice in speech to convey meaning.

Italic - (italics) A type style that is characterized by slanted letters. (example, italic)

Key understandings – Important ideas within (literal), beyond (implied), or about (determined through critical analysis) the text that are necessary to comprehension.

Label – Written word or phrase that names the content of an illustration.

Language and literary features – (as text characteristics) Qualities particular to written language that are qualitatively different from spoken language(for example, dialogue, figurative language, and literary elements such as character, setting, and plot in fiction or description and technical language in nonfiction).

Layout – The way the print is arranged on a page.

Letter-sound correspondence – Recognizing the corresponding sound of a specific letter when that letter is seen or heard.

Letters – Graphic symbols representing the sounds in a language. Each letter has particular distinctive features and may be identified by letter name or sound.

Leveled books – Texts designated along a gradient from level A (easiest) to level Z (hardest).

Lexicon – Words that make up language.

Long vowel – The elongated vowel sound that is the same as the name of the vowel; it is sometimes represented by two or more letters (for example, cake, eight, mail).

Meaning – Meaning, the semantic system of language, refers to meaning derived from words, meaning across a text or texts, and meaning from personal experience or knowledge.

Metaphor - A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles"

Make connections – To search for and use connections to knowledge gained through personal experiences, learning about the world, and reading other texts.

Memoir  - An account of something important, usually part of a person’s life. A memoir is a kind of biography, autobiography, or personal narrative.

Monitor and correct – To check whether the reading sounds right, looks right, and makes sense, and to solve problems when it doesn’t.

Narrative text – A category of texts in which the purpose is to tell a story. Stories and biographies are kinds of narratives.

Nonfiction – A text whose primary purpose is to convey accurate information and facts.

Omission  - (in reading aloud) A word left out or skipped during oral reading.

Onomatopoeia - The formation or use of words such as buzz or murmur that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

Onset – In a syllable, the part (consonant, consonant cluster, or consonant digraph) that comes before the vowel (for example, cr-eam)

Orthographic awareness – The knowledge of the visual features of written language, including distinctive features or letters, as well as spelling patterns in words.

Personification – A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form, as in Hunger sat shivering on the road or Flowers danced about the lawn.

Phoneme – The smallest unit of sound in spoken language. There are approximately forty-four units of speech sounds in English.

Phonemic awareness – The ability to hear individual sounds in words and to identify individual sounds.

Phonemic strategies – Ways to solving words that use how words sound and relationships between letters and letter clusters and phonemes in those words (for example, cat, hat).

Phonics - The knowledge of letter-sound relationships and how they are used in reading and writing. Teaching phonics refers to helping children acquire this body of knowledge about the oral and written language systems; additionally, teaching phonics helps children use phonics knowledge as part of a reading and writing process.

Possessive  - Grammatical constructions used to show ownership

(for example, John’s, his)

Predict – To use what is known to think about what will follow while reading continuous text.

Processing – The mental operations involved in constructing meaning from written language.

Prompt – A question, direction, or statement designed to encourage the child to say more about a topic.

Punctuation – Marks used in written text to clarify meaning and separate structural units. The comma and the period are common punctuation marks.

Repetition - The reader saying a word, phrase, or section of a text more than once.

Rhyme – The ending part of a word that sounds like the ending part of another word (for example, m-ail, t-ale)

Rubric – A scoring tool that relies on descriptions of response categories for evaluation. Teachers often use rubrics to score writing assignments and projects.

Segment – (in reading) To divide into parts (for example, c-at)

Short vowel – A brief duration sound represented by a vowel letter (for example, the “a” sound in cat).

Silent e – The final e in a spelling pattern that usually signals a long vowel sound in the word and does not represent a sound itself (for example, make)

Silent reading – The reader reading silently to him/herself.

Simile – A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in “Her smile was as bright as the sun.”

Solve words – To use a range of strategies to take words apart and understand their meaning.

Sounding out – Pronouncing the sounds of the letters in a word as a step in reading the word.

Standardized – Remaining essentially the same across multiple instances.

Stress – The emphasis given to some syllables or words.

Substitution  - (as an error in reading) The reader reading aloud one (incorrect) word for another.

Suffix – An affix or group of letters added at the end of a base word or root word to change its function or meaning (for example, handful, hopeless).

Summarize – To put together and remember important information, while disregarding irrelevant information, during or after reading.

Syllabication – The division of words into syllables (for example, pen-cil)

Synonym – One of two or more words that have different sounds but the same meaning (for example, chair and seat)

Syntax – The study of how sentences are formed and of the grammatical rules that govern their formation.

Synthesize – To combine new information or ideas from reading text with existing knowledge to create new understandings.

Text structure – The overall architecture or organization of a piece of writing. Chronology (sequence) and description are two common text structures.

Theme – The central idea or concept in a story or the message that the author is conveying.

Thinking within, beyond, and about the text – Three ways of thinking about a text while reading. Thinking within the text involves efficiently and effectively understanding what is one the page, the author’s literal message. Thinking beyond the text requires making inferences and putting text ideas together in different ways to construct the text’s meaning. In thinking about the text, readers analyze and critique the author’s craft.

Topic – The subject of a piece of writing.

Vowel – A speech sound or phoneme made without stoppage of or friction in the airflow. The vowel sounds are represented by a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w.

Word  - A unit of meaning in language.

Word family – A term often used to designate words that are connected by phonograms or rimes (for example, hot, not, pot, shot). A word family can also be a series of words connected by meaning (affixes added to a base word; for example; base, baseball, basement, basal, basis, baseless, baseline, baseboard).