Phonics Exam

alphabetic Principle

the concept that letters or groups of letters in alphabetic written systems represent the phonemes of spoken language

skills aligned text

text that focuses on specific phonics elements for purposeful and systematic practice

consonant digraph

a combination of two consonants that combine to form one single sound

grapheme phoneme correspondent

the relationship between the sounds and the written letters in words

grapheme

letters or combination of letters that represent sounds

alphabet recognition

the ability to recognize uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet

decoding

the act of interpreting the printed letters of a word using their associated sounds to read the word

encoding

the act of segmenting and spelling words in writing

systematic phonics instruction

phonics instruction that follows a development sequence

phonics

an approach to teaching reading that emphasizes the systematic relationship between the sounds of language and the letter combinations that represent these sounds

consonant blend

a sequence of two or more distinguished consonant sounds before or after a vowel sound

diphthong

a vowel sound produced when the tongue moves of glides from one vowel sound to another

environmental print

words that appear in the environment that include illustrations such as color, font, or image

phoneme

individual sounds in words

elkonin boxes

squares drawn to represent the number of sounds in a word that allow a child to slow down the ananlysis of the word by sliding a chip to each square as they pronounce each sound

onset

the consonant sounds in a syllable the precede the vowel such as the /s/ /t/ in stop and /b/ in bat

phoneme blending

the ability to put phonemes together to make words

rime

the part of a syllable that includes the vowel and all subsequent sounds in the syllable such as /o/ /p/ in stop

phoneme segmenting

the ability to break down a word into its individual phonemes

syllable

a unit of speech, either a word or a part of a word, containing a vowel or vowel sound

phoneme deletion

students remove a sound from a word so that the remainder of the sounds within the word all remain in place

phonemic awareness

the ability to work with the individual phonemes in spoken words

phonological Awareness

the ability to hear and manipulate the spoken parts of words and sentences

phoneme manipulation

students modify, change, or move the individual sounds in a word

Tier 1 words

general words that are typically in the spoken vocabulary for most students and are typically acquired through interactions with other people and texts.

Context clues

an outside-the-word strategy that students can use to figure out the meaning of unknown words from the surrounding sentence or sentences.

Tier 3 words

words that are highly specific to a particular subject or content area.

Morpheme

the smallest unit of meaning.

Explicit word learning

words are learned as teachers clearly demonstrate or explain what a word means and show students how to solve for unknown words; direct word learning.

Prefix

bound morphemes that appear at the beginning of a word

Suffix

bound morphemes that appear at the end of a word.

Affix

used to describe both prefixes and suffixes; modifies the meaning of words

Base word

free morphemes that can stand alone as words

Tier 2 words

words that are commonly used in academic settings and across content areas.

Incidental word learning

new words are learned through the context of the students’ environment, including listening and reading tasks; indirect word learning.

Root

bound morphemes that are often Latin or Greek in origin.

Cognate

two words having a shared ancestral language meaning.