COMPREHENSIVE BALANCED LITERACY GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Assessments / General / Reading / Writing
AssessmentsDIBELS
A screening assessment developed by the University of Oregon, for the purpose of identifying students who are at risk in reading or below grade level. It is given to all students three times during the school year to determine whether adequate progress is being made and to identify those students who have dropped to the at risk status.
Diagnostic Assessment
Specific assessments used to identify concepts, skills, and understandings students are lacking that are preventing student from making adequate progress at grade level. Formative Assessments
Assessments that allow teachers to determine the degree to which students know specific concepts or can perform certain tasks. Outcomes inform future instruction for learning.
Formal Assessment
Assessment procedures that contain specific rules for administration, scoring, and interpretation; generally norm-referenced and/or standardized or criterion-referenced.
Informal Assessment
Assessment procedures without rigid guidelines, used for obtaining information
through task analysis, inventories, projects, portfolios, teacher made assessments, etc.
Summative Assessment
Evaluations given at the conclusion of specific a unit, activity, class, or school year. Outcomes are the culmination of a teaching/learning process.
General Anecdotal Records
The recording of observed behavioral incidents of learning.
Collaboration Within a Professional Learning Community (PLC)
A process where teacher teams come together to analyze student data, identify students needs, create curriculum maps based on Core standards and objects and students needs, plan common lessons with common assessments to meet needs, monitor student progress, plan enrichment and re-teaching.
Differentiation
Differentiation ensures that all students have access to a quality education. It suggests that students are provided with materials, instruction, and tasks to meet their educational needs.
Gradual Release Of Responsibility
Also called scaffolding or To/ With/ By. Teacher models, provides “think aloud”, guided practice, independent practice, and independent application and transfer.
Mastered
This term indicates knowledge mastered or learned at the grade level. Learning should be maintained.
Morphological
The formation of words using the smallest parts of words admissible in language.
Pragmatic
The practical, factual standards and concepts that are the foundation of teaching and learning. Teachers takes the responsibility for the process and the result of the “in-put” and the “out-put”
Semantic
Pertaining to significant meaning in language. Often related to a “semantic web”, and “semantic mapping”, which refer to a graphic display of a cluster of words that are meaningfully related.
Syntactic (syntax)
Pertaining to the word order of language.; assists in determining the meaning of a word.
Word Wall
A systematically organized collection of words displayed in large letters on a wall or large display place in the classroom. Words should come from grade level high frequency words, grade level content specific words, and other words of importance. It is a tool to use, not just a display!
Reading Alphabetic Principle
The assumption that all speech sounds have a graphic representation
Automaticity
The fluent reading of words in a text and the spontaneous formation of letters to make words.
Blending
The ability to sequentially combine two or more sounds to make a word.
Book Talk
The discussion of books by a teacher, librarian, or students to encourage others to read them; a discussion after a books is read; a group discussion to enhance comprehension.
Choral Reading
Students reading aloud simultaneously in a group, used to practice fluency.
Chunking (chunks)
The grouping of smaller units/letters into larger, more meaningful word parts; knowledge of patterns in words or word parts.
Comprehension
This is the reason for reading! Students should regularly engaged in purposeful activities based on explicit instruction focused on the ten comprehension strategies
Concepts of Print
The understanding of the way print works, including directionality, recognition of words and letters, the connection between spoken and written language, and the function of punctuation.
Cueing Systems
Sources of information that may help identify words initially not known.
Semantic cue: Identifies an unknown word using meaning of content to determine whether the word makes sense
Syntactic cue: Uses knowledge of rules and patterns to language to identify a word in context.
Graphophonic cues: Using the elements of phonics to decode a word.
CVC
Indicates a spelling pattern of consonant, vowel, consonant.
Decodable Text
Text composed of words containing certain decodable elements for practice in decoding while reading (i.e., short a vowel sound).
Decoding
Strategies readers use to pronounce and understand the meaning or words. (see cueing system).
Environmental Print
Print found in the environment (e.g., street signs, billboards, food labels, advertisements).
Explicit
Teaching according to precise directions; not leaving the student to infer or guess about meaning or concept.
Fix-up Strategies
Strategies readers use to monitor understanding of text (re-read, clarify, change predictions, make new predictions, raise questions, identify unknown words, etc.). Fluency
The ability to read text accurately and quickly, with prosody. Refer to fluency charts to determine appropriate grade level fluency rates. In determining guided reading levels, fluency, must be taken into consideration, especially in third grade and above.
Grapheme
The smallest part of the written language that represents a phoneme in the spelling of a word.
Genre
A term used to categorize literary works (e.g., fairy tales, mysteries, historical fiction).
Graphic Organizer
A visual representation of facts and concepts from text showing relationships (KWL charts, Venn Diagrams, etc.)
Guided Reading
A flexible small group setting for explicit, direct instruction provided on student’s instructional levels, focused on word recognition, comprehension, and fluency. Teachers regularly listed to students read independently, keeping accurate, up-to-date records.
High-frequency Words
A list of word most frequently encountered in reading, that students should recognize instantly and read with fluency. Also called Sight Words.
Independent Reading
Voluntary reading for pleasure; not to develop skills; reading with no assistance.
Informational Text
Text based on factual information as opposed to story-based narrative text.
Informal Reading
Graded reading passages used to determine student’s strengths, weaknesses, and strategies in word identification and comprehension.
Interventions
Direct, explicit instruction and support provided daily to struggling readers to meet individual student needs.
Tier I - regular classroom provided in 3 hour literacy block
Tier II - additional 30 minutes of instruction given in addition to 3 hour block
Tier III – More intense, over longer periods of time, times vary to meet needs (Resource, ELL, other special needs)
Generally, students should not miss Tier I literacy block to receive Tier II Tier III instruction unless determined in the IEP or school educational team.
Leveled Text
Texts arranged in sequence of difficulty, not necessarily related to grade levels.
Literacy Centers
Centers within the classroom, where students are able to access appropriate materials that enable them to explore and work (independently, in pairs, or in small groups) in meaningful, literacy-based activities that reinforce previous literacy instruction. A valuable tool for enhancing student independent learning while the teacher is facilitating guided reading groups.
Literature Circles Small groups of students read the same text, assume cooperative group roles, and meet together to discuss reactions, raise questions, or re-read favorite parts. Metacognition
Reflection on ones own thinking and learning processes; monitoring reading behavior and adjusting successfully to changing reading conditions.
Modeling
A scaffolded technique teachers use to explicitly teach students how to perform a particular task, strategy, or skill. It includes “think alouds” and clear examples for students to replicate.
Monitored Independent Reading (MIR)
A learning strategy wherein students self-select books in a variety of genres on their reading level, which they read daily for a set block of independent reading time. MIR helps students develop a love for reading, improve reading skills, increase vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.Teachers provide guidance in choosing appropriate texts and hold students accountable through a variety of non-graded methods . Morpheme
A meaningful linguistic unit that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful elements.
Narrative Text
A story of actual or fictional events expressed orally or in writing.
Onsets & Rimes
Parts of spoken language that are smaller than syllables but larger than phonemes. On onset is the initial consonant(s) sound; the rime is the part of a syllable that contains the vowel and follows the onset.
Oral Language
The reception and expression of the pragmatic, syntactic, morphological, and phonological aspects of language. It involves listening and speaking.
Partner Reading/Paired Reading
Students reading aloud with a more fluent partner (or with a partner of equal ability who provides a model of fluent reading, helps with word recognition, and provides feedback.
Phoneme
The smallest part of spoken language that makes a difference in the meaning of words. The English language has 41 phonemes.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is a precursor to matching sounds to letters.
Phonics
A system of teaching reading and spelling that stresses the basic symbol-sound relationship between the letters (graphemes) of written language and the individual sounds (phonemes) of spoken and written language and their application n decoding words.
Phonological Awareness
A broad term that includes phonemic awareness activities including work with rhyming, words, syllables, and onsets and rimes.
Prosody
The elements of speech such as intonation, pitch, rate, loudness, rhythm, etc.
Read Aloud
A literature selection read orally to the students to expose them to the written word in a wide variety of genres, as a means to increase vocabulary and comprehension, foster enjoyment of reading, and model fluency and expression. Readers’ Theater
Students rehearse and perform dialogue-rich scripts, which provide a legitimate reason for rereading texts to practice fluency.
Reading Levels
Levels based on students’ abilities to read and comprehend text with fluency.
Independent: Text that is easy for student to read with few word-identification problems, with high comprehension (95-100% word identification & 90-100% comprehension)
Instructional: Text that is challenging but can be successful with explicit instruction and support (90-95% word identification & 75-90% comprehension)
Frustrational: Text that is too challenging for student to read and comprehend (less than 90% word identification & less than 75% comprehension).
Reciprocal Teaching
Four basic comprehension strategies, questioning, clarifying, visualizing and summarizing, that all students should be able to use independently when reading. Is very effective for struggling readers.
Running Records
A tool for coding scoring, and analyzing a student’s precise reading behaviors to determine independent and instructional reading levels. Teacher monitors word attack skills, comprehension, and fluency. Data received is used to drive instruction.
Schema Building
A process of comprehension which integrates new information with a network of prior knowledge (Background Knowledge).
Self-monitoring
Recognizing errors and dissonance while reading text and applying appropriate fix-up strategies to effectively decode and comprehend.
Shared Reading
An activity in which the teacher and the students share access to the same text to develop fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills, i.e., big books, charts,overheads, graphs, readers’ theater, poetry, anthologies.
Syllable
A word part that contains a vowel or, in spoken language, a vowel sound.
Synthesis
The combining of separate ideas to form a coherent encompassing idea.
Text
Reading material, including narrative and informational.
Word Sort
An activity where words or pictures representing words are sorted according to common spelling patterns or shared meaning.
Vocabulary
Consists of words, language, terminology, and expressions we must know to communicate effectively with others, and can general be described as oral vocabulary (words we use in speaking or when listening to others) and reading vocabulary (words we recognize in print).
Writing Form/Mode
A term used in writing to identify categories of writing (personal writing, descriptive writing, imaginative writing, informational writing, and persuasive writing).
Independent Writing
Students work independently, using their current knowledge of the writing process to compose and construct their own texts.
Interactive/Shared Writing
An instructional strategy in which teachers and students collaboratively share the writing responsibility for composing a coherent text. It includes embedding phonics, spelling, composition skills, strengthening phonemic awareness, and practicing high frequency words in the readable text.
Modeled Writing
Teacher models use of oral language to promote writing, how writing works, and writing stages, while verbalizing through “think aloud” during the modeling.Teacher acts as scribe.
Writer’s Workshop
A block of time devoted to teaching the writing process and 6+1 Traits Assessment Model, which includes student planning, drafting, and editing compositions for publication.
6 +1 Traits Model Designed around a rubric that examines six aspects of writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions + presentation. This instrument provides feedback to students and teachers to help guide instruction.
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