FTCE - Reading K-12

Ability Grouping

Grouping of children with similar needs for instructional purposes. They do not remain constant throughout the year but change as the children's needs within them change.

Phoneme

The smallest unit of speech that can be used to make one word different from another word.

Independent Reading Level

The level at which a student can read a text on his/her own as indicated by a 95% accuracy rate.

Grapheme

Unit of writing that represents a single phoneme-can be a letter or group of letters.

Morpheme

Smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of language (e.g., in, come, -ing, forming incoming ).

Instructional Level

The level at which students can read with the assistace of a teacher as indicated by an 85-95% accuracy rate.

Action Research

Teacher research that is carried out by a teacher practitioner in the classroom to help a teacher evaluate his/her performance in the classroom

Frustration Level

The level at which students shouldn't read and indicates an accuracy rate below 85%.

Adams, Marilyn Jager

A theorist in early reading (emergent reading) who has identified five tasks for phonemic awareness: Task 1- Ability to hear rhymes and alliteration. Task 2- Ability to do oddity tasks (recognize the member of a set that is different.) Task 3 -The ability to orally blend words and split syllables. Task 4 -The ability to orally segment word. Task 5- The ability to do phonics manipulation tasks.

Allington, Richard

Matching Text to Readers. Research has included reading and learning disabilities, and effective instruction in classroom settings.

Alliteration

Occurs when words begin with the same consonant sound, as in Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Alphabetic Principle

The idea that written spellings represent spoken words. Also known as graphophenemic awareness.

Anchor Book

A balanced literacy term for a book that is purposely read repeatedly and used as part of both the reading and writing workshop. It is a good idea to use certain books that become the children's familiar and cherished favorites for both reading and inspiring children's writing.

Assonance

Repetition of stressed vowel sounds within words with different end consonants. "Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geese".

Atwell, Nancy

Author of "In The Middle: Writing, Reading and Learning With Adolescents". She believes that students become better writers if they are given ownership of what they are writing and long uninterrupted blocks of time to write. Rejects lectures, assignments, tests and worksheets. Mini-lessons are good to address topics as needed.

Authentic Assessment

Assessment activities that reflect the actual workplace, family, community, and school curriculum.

Balanced Literacy Lesson Format

A format for the delivery of a literacy lesson, whether it is a reading or writing-workshop lesson. The format begins with a 10-15 minute mini-lesson delivered by the teacher to the whole class. This mini-lesson is then followed by a thirty-minute small-group lesson (the children break into small groups to work). It concludes with a 10-minute share session during which the whole class reconvenes to share what they have done in the small groups. This format is often referred to as the whole-small-whole group approach.

Behaviorism

Learning is the acquisition of new behavior through conditioning. Three basic assumptions are held to be true. First, learning is manifested by a change in behavior. Second, the environment shapes behavior. And third, the principles of contiguity (how close in time two events must be for a bond to be formed) and reinforcement (any means of increasing the likelihood that an event will be repeated) are central to explaining the learning process.

Benchmarks

School, state, or nationally-mandated statements of expectations for student learning and achievement in various content areas.

BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (An ELL/Bilingual Education term)

Learning second-language skills and becoming proficient in a second language through face to face interaction-translation through speaking, listening, and viewing.

Big Books

Best way to model directionality and one to one word matching in primary grades.

Blending

The process of hearing separate phonemes and being able to merge them together to read the word.

Book Features

Children need to be familiar with the following: front and back cover; title and half-title page; dedication page; table of contents; prologue and epilogue; and foreword and after notes. For factual books, children need to be familiar with labels, captions, glossary, index, headings and subheadings of chapters, charts and diagrams, and sidebars.

Bound Morpheme

An inflectional ending that can be added to a base word to change its case, gender, number, tense or form. It cannot stand alone.

Brown & Palinscar

Reciprocal Teaching researchers

Bruner, Jerome

Scaffolding. Contructivism.

Calkins, Lucy

Writing and Reading Workshops. A "constructivist" who believes that children develop a passion for reading when they are given freedom to choose books that are meaningful to them. Her approach to literacy is that children work in small groups and consult each other as much as possible. She advocates that teachers routinely engage in conferences with each individual child about his writing and reading. Took Graves' ideas on writing and translated them to include reading.

Chall, Jeanne

The earliest reading researcher to come to the conclusion that phonics and decoding should be emphasized from the very beginning of reading instruction.

Chard and Osborn

Theorists who established guidelines for children with reading disabilities showing that it is essential for them to work intensely on the alphabetic principle/graphophenemic awareness.

Checklist

An assessment form that lists targeted learning and social behaviors as indicators of achievement, knowledge, or skill. They can be professionally- or teacher-prepared.

Cinquain

A five-line poem that can be read and then used as a model for writing. Generally, line 1 of this format is a single word; line 2 has 2 words that describe the title of line 1; line 3 is comprised of 3 words that are movement words; line 4 has 4 words that express feeling; and line 5 has a single word that is a synonym for line 1's single word.

Clay, Marie

A key theorist whose work has helped teacher's document children's oral reading progress throughout the school year. New Zealand born researcher in the field of special needs emergent literacy. Known for Running Records.

Cognitivism

The theory that humans generate knowledge and meaning through sequential development of an individual's cognitive abilities, such as the mental processes of recognition, recollection, analysis, reflection, application, creation, understanding, and evaluation. The learner requires assistance to develop prior knowledge and integrate new knowledge. The learner requires scaffolding to develop schema and adopt knowledge from both people and the environment. The educators' role is pedagogical in that the instructor must develop conceptual knowledge by managing the content of learning activities. Grew out of Gestalt psychology.

Comprehension

This occurs when the reader correctly interprets the print on the page and constructs meaning from it. It depends on activating prior knowledge, cultural and social background of the reader, and the reader's ability to use ____________-monitoring strategies.

Concepts About Print

Include such things as the following: book handling, looking at print, directionality, sequencing, locating skills, punctuation, and concepts of letters and words.

Consolidated-Alphabetic Stage

Students consolidate their knowledge of grapheme-phoneme blends into larger units that recur in different words.

Consonant Digraphs

Two consecutive consonants that represent one new speech sound. In the word "graph" the ph, which sounds like /f/ is a _________.

Constructivism

Seeks to explain how knowledge is constructed in the human being when information comes into contact with existing knowledge that had been developed by experiences. Discovery, hands-on, experiential, collaborative, project-based, and task-based learning are a number of applications that base teaching and learning on this theory. Draws heavily on psychological studies by Piaget and Bruner.

Contexts

Sentences deliberately prepared by the teacher that include sufficient contextual clues for the children to decipher meaning.

Contextual Redefinition

Using context to determine word meaning.

Cooper, J. David

Theorist who believes that there is a finite body of approved literature children should be taught on various grade levels and has produced books about what everyone needs to know to be literate on various grade levels. He and other advocates of the Balanced Literacy Approach, feel that children become literate, effective communicators and able to comprehend, by learning phonics and other aspects of word identification through the use of engaging reading texts. Engaging text, as defined by the balanced literacy group, are those texts which contain highly predictable elements of rhyme, sound patterns, and plot.

Cooper, J. David

Theorist who believes children should not be "taught" vocabulary and structural analysis. Views literacy as reading, writing, thinking, listening, viewing, and discussing−children learn these abilities by engaging in authentic explorations, readings, projects, and experiences.

Cooperative Reading

Children read with a partner or buddy. It can be silent or oral reading.

Core Curriculum Program

Commercially developed products meant to reach the majority of students and provide them with the necessary skills to be successful readers

Crisscrossers

An ELL term for second-language learners who have a positive attitude toward both first-language and second-language learning. These second-language learners, children from ELL backgrounds, are comfortable navigating back and forth between the two languages as they learn.

Criterion-referenced test

Tests and assessments designed to measure student performance against a fixed set of predetermined criteria or learning standards. In elementary and secondary education, used to evaluate whether students have learned a specific body of knowledge or acquired a specific skill set.

Cues

As they self-monitor their reading comprehensions, readers integrate various sources of information to help them construct meaning from text and graphic illustrations.

Cueing Systems

Sources of information used by readers to help them construct meaning. These include Syntactic and Semantic.

Decodeable Text

A text that a child can read aloud with correct pronunciations

Decoding

"Sounding out" a printed sequence of letters based on knowledge of letter/sound correspondences.

Differentiated Instruction

The need for the teacher, based on observation of individual student's work, progress, test results, fluency, and other reading/literacy behaviors, to provide modified instruction and alternative strategies or activities. These activities are specifically developed by the teacher to address the individual student's needs.

Diphthongs

Two vowels in one syllable where the two sounds are heard. For instance, in the word house both the "o" and the "u" are heard.

Directionality

Children use their fingers to indicate left-to-right direction and return-sweep to the next line.

Dolch, Edward William

A major proponent of the "whole-word" method of beginning reading instruction. Prepared a sight word list in 1936 which was originally published in his book Problems in Reading in 1948. Still in use today.

Early Readers

These readers recognize most high-frequency words and many simple words. They use pictures to confirm meaning. Using meaning, syntax, and phonics, they can figure out most simple words. They use spelling patterns to figure out new words. They are gaining control of reading strategies. They use their own experiences and background knowledge to predict meanings. They occasionally use story language in their writing. This stage follows emergent reading.

Ehri, Linnea

A Professor of Educational Psychology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York--has developed a four phase model of how students learn to read words.

Ehri's Four Phases

1. Pre-alphabetic; 2. Partial-Alphabetic; 3. Full-alphabetic; 4. Consolidated-alphabetic

Emergent Readers

The stage of reading in which the reader understands that print contains a consistent message. The reader can recognize some high frequency words, names, and simple words in context. Pictures can be used to predict meaning. The reader begins to attend to left to right directionality and features of print and may identify some initial sounds and ending sounds in words.

Encode

To change a message into symbols. For example, oral language into writing.

English as a Second Language

A way of teaching English to speakers of other languages using English as the language of instruction.

Expository Text

Non-fiction that provides information and facts. This is what newspapers, science, mathematics, and history texts use. Currently there is much focus, even in elementary schools, on teaching children how to comprehend and author _________ text. They must produce brochures, guides, recipes, and procedural accounts on most elementary grade levels. The teaching of reading of this type of text requires working with a particular vocabulary and concept structure that is very different from that of narrative text. Therefore, time must be taken to teach the reading of this text and contrasting it with the reading of narrative text.

First Language

An ELL term for the language any child acquires in the first few years of life. It is through this acquired language that the child develops phonological and phonemic awareness.

Flesch, Chall, Stahl, Adams, Johnson, and Bauman

Theorists who believe that a phonics-centered approach is crucial for reading success.

Flesch, Rudolf

A key theorist who supports a phonics centered approach before the use of engaging reading texts. This is at the crux of the phonics versus whole language/balanaced literacy/integrated language arts, teaching of reading controversy (The Reading Wars).

Fluent Readers

These readers are able to identify most words automatically. They can read chapter books with good comprehension. They consistently monitor, crosscheck, and self-correct reading. They can offer their own interpretations of text based on personal experiences and prior reading experiences. They are capable of reading a variety of genres independently. Furthermore, they can respond to texts or stories by sharing pertinent examples from their lives. They can also readily make connections to other books they have read. Finally, they are capable of beginning to create spoken and written text in the style of a particular author.

Formal Assessment

A test or an observation of performance done under controlled and regulated conditions.

Fountas and Pinnell

The Developing Readers Assessment System for leveling books was developed by _________________________________.

Frye

Theorist who developed a readability formula and graph.

Full-Alphabetic Stage

These readers possess extensive working knowledge of the graphophonemic system, and they can use this knowledge to analyze fully the connections between graphemes and phonemes in words. They can decode unfamiliar words and store fully analyzed sight words in memory.

Functional Reading

The reading of instructions, recipes, coupons, classified ads, notices, signs, and other documents required to be read to function in society and correctly interpret them.

Gentile, Lance

Oral Language Acquisition Inventory and Oracy Instructional Guide (Oracy = Oral Language + Literacy).

Grade Equivalent/Grade Score

A score transformed from a raw score on a standardized test into the equivalent score earned by an average student in the norming group.

Graphic Organizers

These express relationships among various ideas in visual form including sequence, timelines, character traits, fact and opinion, main idea and details, and differences and likenesses. They are particularly helpful for visual learners.

Graphophenemic Awareness

Refers to alphabetic principle. Involves ability to: • Match all consonant and short vowel sounds. • Read one's own name. • Read one syllable words and high frequency words. • Demonstrate ability to read and understand that as letters in words change, so do the sounds. • Generate the sounds from all letters including consonant blends and long vowel patterns. Blend those different sounds into recognizable words. • Read common sight words. • Read common word families.

Graves, Donald

Writing Workshop. Observed in the 1970s that children were rarely taught how to write beyond grammar and spelling. His idea was idea was to make them chidren conscious of what successful adult writers do—draft ideas, revise, edit, and publish. He sought to help them become more active in their own education, and not incidentally, more self-aware; he advocated that children write extensively about themselves and their observations.

Guided Reading

One of the key modes of instruction in the balanced-literacy theory approach. An interactive discussion between the child and the teacher. This mode of reading instruction is generally used when children need extra support in constructing meaning because the text is complex or because their current independent-reading capacities are still limited.

High Frequency

Frequently used words. These words appear many more times than do other words in ordinary reading material. Examples of such words are as, in, of, and the. These words are also sometimes called service words and are part of sight vocabulary words. A classic, best-known list of these was generated by Dolch (1936).

Holistic assessment

Assessing performance across multiple criteria as a whole.

Independent Reading

A set period of time within the daily literacy block when children read books with 95%-100% accuracy on their own. This reading of books by themselves that they can understand without teacher support promotes lifelong literacy and love of learning. This in turn enhances reading mileage, builds fluency, and helps children orchestrate integrated cue strategies.

Informal Assessment

Observations of children made under informal conditions. These can include kid-watching, checklists, and individual child/teacher conversations.

Informal Reading Inventory (IRI)

A series of reading excerpts that can be used to determine a child's reading strengths and needs in comprehension and decoding. Many published reading series have one to go with their series.

Justified Print

The variable positioning of print on the page so that each line ends either a sentence or a phrase. Both right and left margins form a straight line vertically.

Kid Watching

Term used by the balanced-literacy approach for the teacher's deliberate, detailed, and recorded observations of individual student and class literacy behaviors, often done during small-group work. The teacher then reconfigures lessons on these observations to meet the students' individual and group needs.

Kinesthetic

Learning is tactile as contrasted with an activity where the learner sits still or attempts to sit still in one place. Cutting and moving syllable or word strips or using sandpaper letters.

Language Experience

Children giving dictation to the teacher who writes their words on a chart or their drawings. This shows children that words can be written down.

Learning Logs

Daily records of what students have learned.

Leveled texts

An arrangement of books, both literary and informational, from easiest to hardest defined by a set of characteristics.

Listening Post or Center

Sets of headphones attached to a single tape player. Children can go to centers where they listen to audiotapes of books while reading the same book in print. These posts are in many libraries as well.

Literature Circles

A group discussion involving four to six children who have read the same work of literature (narrative or expository text). They talk about key parts of the work, relate it to their own experience, listen to the responses of others, and discuss how parts of the text relate to the whole.

Manipulation

Moving around or switching sounds within a word or words within a phrase or sentence.

Mann, Horace

Argued that universal public education was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens. built public secular schools in Massachusetts with most states following. "Normal schools" to train professional teachers. Mann has been credited by educational historians as the "Father of the Common School Movement".

Meaning Vocabulary

Words whose meanings children understand and can use.

Metacognition

Defined as "cognition about cognition", or "knowing about knowing". It comes from the root word "meta", meaning behind. It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving.

Miscue

An oral reading error made by a child in which what the child perceives differs from the actual printed text.

Miscue Analysis

The teacher keeps a detailed running record of the errors or inaccurate attempts of a child reader during a reading assessment. This helps the teacher know what help the child needs to avoid such errors.

Monitoring Reading

Various strategies that children use to monitor their own reading. For example, are they maintaining fluency by bringing prior knowledge to the story to make predictions, using these predictions to do further checking, searching, and self-correcting as the story progresses, and using problem solving word-study skills to make links from known words to unknown words?

Morphemes

The smallest units of meaning in words. There are two types: free, which can stand alone, such as love, and bound, which must be attached to another to carry meaning, such as -ed in loved.

Narrative Text

One of the two basic text structures. It tells or communicates a story. Includes novels, short stories, and plays as well as some poems Needs to be taught differently than the expository text because of its structure.

Norm-referenced test

Provide information about how the local test takers did compared to a representative sampling of national test takers.

One-to-One Matching

Matching one spoken word with one written word.