Phonics Review

Decoding

In reading out loud, being able to sound out words by breaking them into simple forms. In reading for comprehension, the understanding of how to read each letter or letter pattern in a word to determine the word's meaning

High-Frequency Word

A word that appears often in grade-level text

Words like "and", "the", "as" and "it" are high-frequency words.

Decodable Word

Words that follow common letter/sound correspondence rules and can be "sounded out"

For a third grader, words like "family" and "afternoon" are decodable.

Word Families

A group of words with a shared ending letter group/sound

back, black, stack, shack, quack, lack, tack

Grapheme

A written letter or a combination of letters that represents a single sound.

"ph" makes a "f" sound

Synthetic Phonics Approach

An accelerated approach to phonics instruction that explicitly teaches how to convert letters into sounds (phonemes) and then blend the sounds to form words.

A teacher first teaches the sounds of each letter and then focuses on how to blend the sounds together to pronounce whole words

R-Controlled Vowel

A vowel followed by the letter r where the "r" that doesn't make its normal short or long sound

In the word, "tiger," the letter e is an r-controlled vowel, as its pronunciation changes because it is followed by an r.

Phonemic Awareness / Sound Awareness

The ability to hear, identify, and re-create individual sounds in spoken words

A student can hear that /b/ makes first sound in the word "blue"

Short Vowel

The sound that most often corresponds to a vowel when the vowel occurs individually between consonants.

Phoneme

The smallest individual sounds in a word

The word "bit" has three phonemes - b - i - t.

Vowel Digraph

Two vowels that make a single vowel sound when together in a word, also known as "vowel teams"

the "ai" in paint; the "ee" in need; the "oa" in boat

Automaticity

The ability to read words effortlessly

Encode

Using individual sounds to spell a word

To encode, a student must represent the sounds of a word with letters. For example, the word cat would be encoded as /c/, /a/ and /t/.

Embedded Phonics Approach

An approach to phonics instruction that involves implicitly teaching through reading or in context

A student learns to decode the word "snake" when reading a short story about a boy who goes hiking.

Diphthong

One vowel sound made by the combination of two vowel sounds

the "ou" in south; the "au" in taught; the "oy" in oyster

Long Vowel

When a vowel sounds like its name, this is called a long vowel sound.

Long A sound is AY as in cake. Long E sound is EE an in sheet ... etc.

Progress Monitoring

Periodic assessments to monitor student growth and evaluate the effectiveness of instruction

The teacher prepared a progress monitoring assessment to see how much each student had improved and learn if his new instructional approach was effective.

Spelling-Based Phonics Approach

An approach to phonics instruction that involves spelling rules and phonemes

In a spelling-based phonics approach, students learn the sounds of each letter and put the sounds together to create a word.

Morphology

The study of forms of words, including affixes, roots, stems, and parts of speech.

Fry Word List

The 100 most frequently occurring words in the English language; often used for sight word instruction

Consonant Blend

two or more consonants that blend together when decoded, but each retains its own sound

In the word "blue," the letters b and l form the consonant blend, bl

Word Analysis

breaking down words into morphemes, or the smallest units of meaning

Consonant Digraph

two consonants that make a single consonant sound when together in a word

In the word "wish," the letters s and h form the consonant digraph, sh.

Phonics / Graphophonemic Principle

Using the relationship between symbols (letters and words) and sounds of a language to read and write

Analytic Phonics Approach

a common approach to phonics instruction in which students are taught to recognize whole words by sight and then to break down words into smaller units of sound

The analytic phonics method teaches students about spelling and letter patterns and their sounds. For example, if the student knows "man" and "ran", then the word "tan" should be easy to read.

Sight Word

word that cannot be decoded because it doesn't follow standard phonics rules and must be recognized by sight

Affix

A letter or letters that change a root word's meaning

Sight Word Instruction

the approach taken when teaching high frequency, often irregular words to early readers

Inflectional Affix

an affix that changes the form of the root or base word

(ed changes a word to past tense)

Language Transfer

process that occurs when students who are learning a new language transfer knowledge from L1 to L2

Morpheme

A combination of sounds that has meaning in speech or writing and cannot be divided into smaller grammatical parts. This includes prefixes and suffixes.

write, cat, laugh, box

Cognates

Words in two languages that share a similar meaning, spelling, and pronunciation.

Heart Word Method

a focus on high-frequency words with irregular spellings that don't conform to phonics rules

Whole Word Reading

reading a word by sight, without attempting to decode it

Analogy-Based Phonics Approach

an approach to phonics instruction in which students use knowledge of word patterns to decode new words