Reading Concepts and Literacy Fundamentals Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering foundational reading instruction concepts, phonics, syllable types, literacy assessments, and reading frameworks.

Phonics

A method in which basic phonetics, the study of human speech sounds, is used to teach the beginning of reading.

Phonetics

The study of human speech sounds.

Phoneme

The smallest sound unit of a language that distinguishes one word from another (e.g., 44 phonemes in American English).

Phonemic Awareness

The ability to recognize spoken words as a sequence of individual sounds.

Consonant Blend

Two or three consonant phonemes together before or after a vowel within a syllable that are blended together without losing their own identities.

Diphthong

A single vowel sound made up of the glide from one vowel sound to another in immediate sequence and pronounced in one syllable.

R-Controlled Vowel

When a vowel is followed by the letter r, affecting the vowel sound so that it is neither short nor long.

Schwa Sound

An unstressed sound commonly occurring in unstressed syllables that closely resembles the sound for 'u'.

Grapheme

A letter or combination of letters that represents a sound.

Digraph

Two letters that stand for a single phoneme (sound).

Onset

The consonant sounds of a syllable that come before the vowel.

Rime

The part of a syllable that includes the vowel sound and any consonant sounds that come after it.

Phonograph

A letter sequence comprised of a vowel grapheme and ending consonant graphemes.

Syllable

A unit of pronunciation consisting of a vowel alone or a vowel with one or more consonants.

Closed Syllable

Any syllable that ends with a consonant phoneme (sound).

Open Syllable

Any syllable that ends with a vowel sound (phoneme).

Breve

The orthographic symbol (˘) placed over a vowel letter to show it is pronounced as a short sound (sometimes called an unglided vowel).

Circumflex

The orthographic symbol (^) placed above vowel graphemes to indicate pronunciation.

Macron

The orthographic symbol (–) placed over a vowel letter to show it is pronounced as a long sound (sometimes called a glided vowel).

Umlaut

The orthographic symbol (¨) placed above vowel graphemes to indicate pronunciation.

Syntactic

The system of rules for arranging words to create proper sentences.

Homographs

A word with the exact same spelling as another word but has a different meaning.

Morpheme

The smallest meaningful unit of language, such as a prefix, root, or suffix.

Derivational Suffix

Word endings that change the meaning of a base word.

Consonant

A phoneme (distinct unit of sound) made with a closed or partially closed vocal tract.

Short Vowels

Sounds of /ă/ as in pat, /ĕ/ as in Ed, /ŏ/ as in octopus, /ĭ/ as in igloo, and /ŭ/ as in up, indicated with a breve (˘).

Long Vowels

Vowel sounds that are also letter names, such as /ā/ as in cake, /ē/ as in eat, /ī/ as in bite, /ō/ as in coat, and /ū/ as in cube.

Virgules

A short, slanted punctuation mark (/) commonly known as a forward slash.

Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping

One-to-one relationship between oral speech sounds (phonemes) and the letter or letters (graphemes) that represent those sounds in print.

Trigraphs

A group of three letters that work together to make a single sound.

High Frequency Words

Words that occur frequently in text and thus are important for students to learn to read with automaticity.

Orthographic Mapping

Refers to the formation of letter and sound connections that enhance spelling, pronunciation, and meaning, resulting in words being more easily retained in memory.

Elkonin Boxes

Tools used to build phonological awareness skills by having children segment spoken words into their individual sounds (phonemes).

Morphology

Study of meaningful units of language and how they are combined to form words.

Segmenting

The process of breaking a spoken word down into its individual sounds, or phonemes.

Syllabication

Process of dividing words into syllables.

Silent E (VCe) Syllable

A word part that ends with a vowel, a single consonant, and a silent 'e,' where the final 'e' makes the preceding vowel produce a long sound.

Vowel Team Syllable

Contains two vowels that make one sound, such as read or train.

Consonant-le Syllable

A final, unstressed word part that contains a consonant followed by the letters l and e.

Big Five Pillars of Reading

Phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary.

Concepts of Print

A child's understanding of how printed language works and how books are structured to carry meaning.

Phonological Awareness

Global awareness of large chunks of speech, such as syllables, onset, and rime, at the phoneme level.

Phoneme Isolation

An activity where children learn to recognize and identify individual sounds in a word.

Phoneme Identity

An activity where children learn to recognize the same sounds in different words.

Phoneme Categorization

An activity where children recognize the word in a set of three or four words that has the 'odd' sound.

Phoneme Blending

An activity where children learn to listen to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes and then combine the phonemes to form a word.

Phoneme Segmentation

An activity where children break a word into its separate sounds, saying each sound as they tap out or count it.

Fluency

Ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with proper expression (prosody) and comprehension.

Vocabulary

Knowledge about the meanings and pronunciations of words.

Tier 1 Vocabulary

Basic, everyday words used in common social conversation.

Tier 2 Vocabulary

High-frequency words; the most common words found in print.

Tier 3 Vocabulary

Words whose frequency of use is quite low, often being limited to specific domains.

Comprehension

Making sense of what we read; the formation of the mental model, ensuring understanding of what we read.

Literal Comprehension

The most basic level of reading or listening understanding.

Inferential Comprehension

The ability to read between the lines and understand meaning or motives that an author does not state directly in a text.

Schema

A mental framework or background knowledge that helps the brain organize and connect new information.

Scarborough’s Reading Rope

A model illustrating how multiple strands of Language Comprehension and Word Recognition are woven together into skilled reading.

Simple View of Reading

Scientific formula showing that reading comprehension is the product of decoding multiplied by language comprehension.

Alphabetic Principle

Understanding that written language is a code in which written letters (graphemes) represent units in spoken language (phonemes).

Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM)

A method teachers use to find out how students are progressing in basic academic areas such as math, reading, writing, and spelling.

Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)

The ability to read a text accurately, at a good pace, and with proper expression and comprehension.

Formative Assessment

Used to measure learning during instruction; occurs regularly throughout the process to inform instruction.

Diagnostic Assessment

Assessments used to pinpoint specific areas of weakness; provide in-depth information to clarify students' skills and instructional needs.

Universal Screening

Type of criterion-referenced assessment administered to all children several times per year to quickly determine who is achieving as expected or at risk.

Accuracy

Reading written words correctly.

Automaticity

Any skilled and complex behavior that can be performed rather easily with little attention, effort, or conscious awareness.

Data-Driven Instruction

Using screening and progress monitoring data to identify students who need additional support and target targeted skills.

Miscue Analysis

An analytical procedure for assessing a student's word reading and reading comprehension based on samples of oral reading.

Frustration Reading Level

A reading difficulty level where a student reads with less than 90% word accuracy and struggles to understand the text.

Instructional Reading Level

A reading level where a student can sound out words and learn new letter-sound rules with a little help from a teacher.

Independent Reading Level

The highest level of text a student can decode and read with at least 95% to 98% accuracy and solid comprehension entirely on their own.