Definitions of Literacy Terms

alphabet knowledge: recognizing letters of the alphabet.

assessment: a way to evaluate reading development and proficiency.

buddy reading: pairing a child from an upper grade with a younger child.

choral chanting: the entire class, or a small group of children, reads a passage together.

comprehension: the ability to understand and gain meaning from what has been read.

concepts about print: knowledge about books: how to hold them, move from left to right, front to back.

decoding: the combination of phonemic awareness, letter recognition, and sound knowledge that enables us to break down new and unfamiliar words.

echo chanting: the teacher reads one line of text and the child then reads the same line.

emergent reading: the time between birth and when children begin to read and write in conventional ways.

encoding: the combination of phonemic awareness, letter, and sound knowledge that enables us to spell words by translating sounds into letters.

fluency: the ability to read text accurately and quickly.

language acquisition: the stages of listening and speaking development.

language proficiency: the level at which a person can speak and understand a language.

letter identification: recognizing the letters of the alphabet.

letter-sound relationship: recognizing the letters of the alphabet and their accompanying sounds.

mental imagery: the skill of visualizing what you see after you have been read to.

partner reading: involves peers reading together.

phonemic awareness: the ability to hear and identify sounds in spoken words

phonics: the relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language.

vocabulary: the words students must know to communicate effectively.