Get Ready to Read!
Literacy Term of the Month 
May 2007

May 2007: Explicit Instruction
Explicit instruction refers to teaching children in a systematic and sequential manner. 

For example, explicit instruction in early literacy involves directly teaching the speech sounds to young children, distinct from the letters that represent them. This is important because for most children, learning to read does not happen naturally without planned, intentional steps toward specific learning goals.

Educators using explicit instruction in early literacy specifically call attention to sound and word pronunciation and emphasize blending and separating sounds in spoken words.

April 2007:  Syllable
A syllable is the smallest part a spoken word can be broken into that includes a vowel, or in spoken language, a vowel sound.

For example, "elephant" has three syllables: e-le-phant, and watermelon has four syllables: wa-ter-me-lon.

As children progress in reading and writing, the ability to break longer words into syllables becomes increasingly important.

March 2007: Comprehension
Comprehension is the process of understanding and making meaning from written text or spoken language.  Along with the ability to sound out words and read with fluency, developing good reading comprehension is key to becoming a strong reader.

February 2007: Invented Spelling
When beginning writers use what they know about letters, sounds and visual patterns in words to attempt to spell a word, it is often called “invented spelling.”  It plays an important role in helping children learn how to read and write.

For example, a child may write “I can read” as “I kn rd” until they know the conventional spellings for those words.  In this example, the child has written the sounds that he or she hears in the words, and has done a great job of representing the beginning and ending sounds in the words.

January 2007: Decodable Texts
Books for beginning readers that contain simple words with the same vowel sounds and similar spellings that are easy for young children to “sound out” using their developing knowledge of letter sounds.  Decodable books may contain sentences such as, "The fat cat sat on the mat.”

December 2006: Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a language processing disorder that causes difficulty with reading, writing and spelling.
· Dyslexia is NOT a sign of poor intelligence or laziness. It is also not the result of impaired vision.
· Dyslexia can affect different people differently - some can have difficulty with reading and spelling, while others might find using words correctly and writing or telling left from right challenging.
· According to the National Institute of Child and Human Development, as many as 15% of Americans have significant difficulties learning to read.
· Like all learning disabilities, dyslexia is a lifelong challenge.
· Using alternate learning methods, people with dyslexia can learn how to achieve success.

To read the NCLD fact sheet about dyslexia, click here.

November 2006: Sight Word
A sight word is a word that a child instantly recognizes and reads without having to figure, or sound it out.  One commonly used list of sight words is the Dolch Word List. The words on the list are some of the most frequently used words in the English language, so they are important for young readers to master.

For a version of the Dolch Word list, go to click here.

October 2006: Print knowledge
Print knowledge refers to a child's understanding of books, printed letters and words. Some print knowledge skills are: recognizing printed letters of the alphabet, knowing that print carries a message and being aware of how books work.

September 2006: Book knowledge
Book knowledge refers to understanding basic concepts about books and reading, such as how to hold a book, how to turn the pages, and how to follow text from left to right and from top to bottom.

Summer 2006: Vocabulary
Vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings, both orally and in print. In other words, a reader’s vocabulary refers to the words a reader knows and understands. It is important for children to know the meanings of a wide range of words so that they can understand what they are reading.

June 2006: Fluency
Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with proper expression and comprehension. Building fluency is important for beginning readers. As young readers build fluency, they do not have to concentrate as much on decoding words, and can focus their attention on what the text means.

May 2006: Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is the understanding that spoken language can be broken into smaller units of sound such as words, syllables, onset and rime, beginning and ending sounds, and phonemes.

April 2006: Onset and Rime
Onsets and rimes are parts of words in spoken language. These units are smaller than syllables but may be larger than phonemes.

An onset is the initial consonant sound of a syllable (the onset of bag is b; of swim is sw). The rime is the part of a syllable that contains the vowel and all that follows it (the rime of bag is -ag; of swim is -im).

March 2006: Phoneme
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in spoken language. There are about 44 distinct phonemes in the English language. Phonemes, when blended together, make words. For example, the word cat consists of three phonemes, /k/ /a/ /t/, which make a single sound when blended, /kat/.