Reading Terminology

 

• Phoneme – a speech sound and the smallest unit of sound that makes a difference in meaning.  

• Phonological Awareness – Umbrella term that includes various skills: 
  • Recognizing and producing rhyming words.
  • Breaking sentences into words.
  • Breaking words into syllables. 

• Phonemic Awareness – Understanding that spoken words are made of individual sounds, and the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in words.  

• Phoneme Blending – Combining a sequence of phonemes to form a word. 
• Phoneme Matching – Recognizing similar sounds in different words. 

• Phoneme Isolation – Recognizing individual sounds in words.

• Phoneme Segmentation – Breaking words into their separate sounds by counting or identifying the sounds.  

• Phoneme Manipulation – Adding, deleting, or substituting sounds.  

• Phonics – Study of sound-spelling correspondences in reading instruction.  

• Synthetic Phonics – Conversion of letters or letter combinations into sounds, and blending the sounds together to form words.   

• Analytic Phonics – Analysis of letter-sound relationships in previously learned words to avoid pronouncing sounds in isolation.

• Analogy-Based Phonics – Using parts of word families to identify unknown words that have similar parts. 

• Embedded Phonics – Introduction of letter-sound relationships incidentally as students encounter them while reading texts.  

• Spelling Phonics – Segmenting words into phonemes and matching letters to those phonemes to spell words. 

• Word Building – Piecing letters together and replacing letters to form words.

• Fluency – Rate, accuracy, and prosody in reading; one of the necessary critical factors for reading comprehension.  

• Timed Reading – allows teachers and students to see progress in fluency development. 

• Partner Reading – Students gather in pairs and take turns reading to each other.

• Choral/Unison Reading – Students read texts along as a group or with the teacher. 

• Vocabulary – Relates to the words we must know in order to communicate effectively; critical in reading instruction and fundamental to reading comprehension. 

• Listening Vocabulary – Involves words students hear and understand.  

• Speaking Vocabulary – Involves words students understand and use when they speak.  

• Reading Vocabulary – Involves words that students know in print. 

• Writing Vocabulary – Involves words students can understand and use while writing. 

• Comprehension – Construction of meaning through interaction between text and the reader, relating prior knowledge and experience to text.  

• Schema Theory – Describes what we know as units if organized knowledge. 

• Specific-Word Instruction – Teaching specific words prior to, during, and after reading text to help students make connections to prior knowledge and solidify their understanding of new words. 

• Word-Learning Strategies – Enable students to apply what they have learned to new words they encounter on their own.  

• Incidental Instruction – Drawing attention to words used by the author, and lively discussion and application of vocabulary in the story.  

• Modeling – Thinking aloud to demonstrate strategies. 

• Guided Practice – opportunities for students to learn how and when strategies are used within the context of reading actual text.  

• Direct Explanation – Teacher describes strategies and when they are used, and students discuss why good readers use them.    

 

All of these reading terms and strategies are essential for the reading education of children.  Through implementation of theses terms, children learn all of the components of literacy, critical for life.     

 

References:

“Teachscape.  LI100: Foundations of Effective Literacy Practice.”  http://login.teachscape.com/web/#/learn