Key terms and concepts based off: "Ready for RICA"

Phonological awareness

the knowledge that oral English is composed of smaller units. 

Phonemic Awareness

the ability to distinguish the separate phonemes (or sounds) in a spoken word.

Phonics

knowledge of letter–sound correspondences. Ph in phonics makes /f/. C makes /c/ and /s/ --city, cake. 

Graphemes

are the English letter or letters that represent phonemes

Vowels

speech sounds made when air leaving your lungs is vibrated in the 

voice box and there is a clear passage from the voice box to your mouth

Consonants 

speech sounds that occur when the airflow is obstructed in some way by your mouth, teeth, or lips.

Onset 

initial consonant sound or consonant blend.

C in Cats

Spr in Spring

Rime

the vowel sound and any consonants that follow

ats in Cats

ing in Spring

Phonograms 

rimes that have the same spelling. Word families: cat, bat, sat.

Role of phonological and phonemic Awareness in reading development. 

Phonemic awareness is the foundation for understanding the sound–symbol relationships 

of English, which will be taught through phonics lessons.

Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation

the teacher says 22 words (e.g., dog, keep, fine, no). The child 

must provide each sound of the word in order. So when the teacher says dog, the correct 

response is /d/, /o/, /g/. 

Entry-Level Assessment 

used to determine each child’s 

level of phonological awareness, including phonemic awareness, before a sequence of 

lessons begins. 

Progress-Monitoring Assessment 

will allow teachers to make two important decisions: 

(a) which individual students need more help, and (b) whether, at the class level, it is 

time to stop and reteach the entire class something

Use in the middle of a 4-5 lesson unit.

Summative Assessment 

occur at the end of instruction 

and tell a teacher whether a student has not met a standard, met a standard, or exceeded 

Concepts about Print 

basic principles about how letters, words, and sentences are represented in written language.

4 Concepts about Print 

an awareness of the relationship between spoken and written language and an understanding 

that print carries meaning; (2) letter, word, and sentence representation; (3) the direc-tionality of print and the ability to track print in connected text; and (4) book-handling skills.

Letter Recognition 

the ability to identify both the uppercase and lowercase letters when a teacher says the name of the letter 

Letter Naming

the ability to say the name of a letter when the 

teacher points to it

Letter formation/Production

the ability to write the uppercase 

and lowercase letters legibly. 

Alphabetic Principle 

letters represent sounds

Phonetic spelling 

temporary or invented spelling--what occurs when a child writes a word, but doesn’t know the accurate spelling. 

Word identification 

the ability to read aloud, or decode, words correctly

Word recognition 

making a connection between the word being 

pronounced and its meaning. 

4 types of sight words

High-frequency words,

Words with irregular spellings, 

Words that children want to know

Words introduced in content-area lessons in social studies and science 

Morphology 

the study of word formation.

Context Clues 

words and phrases surrounding a target word  that can be used by the reading to understand the target word.

Automaticity 

goal of all reading instruction and essential for fluent reading. Word identification is swift and 

accurate. Reading occurs at an appropriate 

pace with appropriate expression. 

Continuous consonant sounds

hold and stretched sounds.

 f, l, m, n, r, s, v, and z 

Stopped/Clipped consonant sounds

sound must be uttered quickly: b, c, d, g, j, k, p, qu, t.

Digraphs

two-letter combinations that make one 

sound.  consonant digraphs: ph, sh, ch, th. Vowel digraphs: oa

Blends

are two- or three-letter combinations, said rapidly, and each letter in a blend makes a sound. Spr, bl, ph, sk, etc.

Diphthong 

are gilded sounds made by such vowel combinations as oi in oil and oy in boy. When pronouncing a diphthong, the tongue starts in one position and rapidly moves to another

R-Controlled Vowels

are neither long nor short. car, her, girl, hurt, for

L-Controlled Vowels

are neither long nor short.

chalk, help, milk, cold, and bull. 

6 rules for cutting syllables

1. Divide b/w compound words: in-side, foot-ball. 2. divide between the prefix and the root: un-kind, pre-test. 3. Never divide a consonant digraph: bush-el, teach-er. 4. Two consonants in the middle of a word that are not digraphs, divide between the consonants: sis-ter, but-ter. 5. Single consonant in the middle of a word between two vowels, the vowel preced-ing the consonant is short, divide after the consonant: cab-in, lev-el.

6. Single consonant in the middle of a word between two vowels, the vowel preced-ing the consonant is long, divide before the consonant: be-long, fe-ver.

Phonetically irregular words

Some words are phonetically irregular because of etymology (word origins)

5 stages of spelling development 

precommunicative, semiphonetic, phonetic, transitional, and conventional.

Decodable text 

Texts, written for young children, that 

use many single-syllable words with regular spellings 

Whole-to-part lessons

also called analytic phonics.

start with sentences, then look at words, and end up with the sound–symbol relationship that is the focus of the lesson.

Part-to-Whole

also called synthetic phonics. 

begin with the sound and then children blend the sounds to build words.

analogy phonics 

In this approach, students are taught unfamiliar words by comparing them to known words, usually with onsets and rimes. 

-ick

Embedded phonics 

This is teaching phonics incidentally as something that is not the central focus of a lesson. For example, after a teacher has read aloud the picture book Make Way for Ducklings, she or he might take a few minutes to work with students on the -ake rime that appears in Make by having the students generate words that rhyme. 

4 categories of word identification lessons that should be included for beginning readers: 

sounding/blending of regular VC 

and CVC words

reading single-syllable, regular words and some high-frequency, irregular sight words;

reading decodable text for practice

spelling VC and CVC words. 

6 categories of word identification lessons that should be included for advanced readers:

(a) regular CVCC, CCVC, and 

CVVC words; (b) regular CVCe words; (c) words with less common elements; (d) use of 

decodable text; (e) words formed by adding a common inflected ending; and (f) spelling 

more complex orthographic patterns

Structural Analysis (morphemic analysis)

The process of identifying and 

recognizing words by analyzing prefixes, suffixes, and root words.

Suffix 

An affix that appears at the end of a root word 

(e.g., ly in the word likely).

Syllabic Analysis 

The process of identifying and recognizing words by analyzing syllables.

Morpheme

The most elemental unit of meaning in a 

language. In English, there are two types of morphemes: some words and all affixes.

Prefix

An affix that appears in front of a root word (e.g., non in the word nonsense).

Orthographic Knowledge 

what a person knows about how to spell words. 

Bound morpheme

a prefix or suffix that cannot occur alone; bound morphemes must be attached to a root word (e.g., un-, -est).

Free morpheme

can be uttered alone with meaning (e.g., test).

Affix

Is either a prefix or a suffix 

Syllable

is pronounced with a single, uninterrupted sounding of the voice. All syllables must have at least one vowel.

Root words

Words that can have either a prefix or suffix added to them, or both.  like is a root word in unlikely and likely 

Prosody 

to read with appropriate 

expression, and includes emphasis of certain words, variation in pitch, and pausing.

Automaticity theory 

reading requires the reader to perform two main tasks: to 

decode words and understand the meaning of the text. If readers are not fluent, then 

they get bogged down on the decoding task and are then unable to focus on getting the 

meaning of the text. 

Accuracy

The ability to pronounce words correctly. 

Rate

how fast a person reads

4 factors that affect fluency

(1) weak word analysis skills, (2) lack 

of familiarity with content vocabulary, (3) lack of background knowledge, and (4) 

lack of familiarity with complex sentence structures.

3 components of monitored oral reading

Teacher model, student practice, teacher feedback. 

Goals of fluency

Swift identification of the letters. single-syllable words with regular letter–sound correspondences and sight words. Swift, accurate reading of multisyllabic 

words. 

How to calculate wcpm 

The teacher subtracts the total number of errors from the total numbers of words read to find the student’s wcpm.

Assessment results

Assessment results should tell the teacher which students’ level of performance 

is (a) below expectation for the standard, (b) at the expectations for the standards, or (c) 

above expectations for the standard