Praxis Teaching Reading: Elementary key terms

The ability to notice and work with the sound structure of spoken language, including syllables, rhymes, and individual sounds. It develops before reading and does not involve printed letters.

The specific ability to hear and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words, such as blending, segmenting, and deleting phonemes. It is a subset of phonological awareness and a strong predictor of early reading success.

The smallest unit of spoken sound that can change a word's meaning, as the /m/ in mat versus the /b/ in bat. English has roughly 44 of them.

A written letter or group of letters that represents a single phoneme, such as b, sh, or igh. Letter-sound correspondence is the basis of phonics instruction.

The understanding that spoken words are made of sounds, that letters represent those sounds, and that letters can be blended to read words and used to spell them.

Instruction in the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent, and in how to use those relationships to decode and spell words.

The smallest unit of meaning in a word, such as the prefix un-, the root read, or the suffix -ing. Teaching morphemes helps students decode and build vocabulary.

A unit of spoken language organized around a single vowel sound, such as the two beats in ta-ble. Syllable awareness supports decoding and spelling of multisyllabic words.

The conventional spelling system of a language, including its letter patterns and rules. English orthography is complex because the same sound can be spelled in several ways.

The mental process in which a reader connects a word's pronunciation, spelling, and meaning so the word can later be recognized instantly. Fluent reading depends on it.

Using knowledge of letter-sound relationships to translate printed words into spoken words. It is the main strategy beginning readers use to identify unfamiliar words.

Planned, sequenced teaching of letter-sound relationships in a logical order, with clear modeling and guided practice. It works better than incidental or whole-word approaches for beginning readers.

Reading material that mostly uses letter-sound patterns students have already been taught, with a limited number of tricky words. It gives beginners practice applying phonics to real reading.

Combining individual sounds into a word, such as joining /k/ /a/ /t/ into cat. It is a key phonemic awareness and phonics skill used in decoding.

Breaking a spoken word into its individual sounds, such as separating cat into /k/ /a/ /t/. It supports spelling development and phonemic awareness.

Words a reader recognizes instantly without sounding them out, including high-frequency irregular words such as was and said. Automatic recognition frees attention for comprehension.

Reading text accurately, at a reasonable rate, and with appropriate expression. Fluent reading supports comprehension because it frees mental effort from identifying words.

Reading with appropriate rhythm, phrasing, stress, and intonation that reflect the meaning of the text. It is one component of oral reading fluency.

The ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly with little conscious attention. It develops through repeated practice and is essential for fluent reading.

A segmentation tool made of a row of boxes, one per phoneme, into which students push tokens while saying each sound. It builds phonemic awareness and supports spelling.

A way of sorting words by usefulness: Tier 1 everyday words, Tier 2 cross-curricular academic words, and Tier 3 domain-specific terms. Tier 2 words are often the best targets for instruction.

Awareness of how words are built from meaningful parts, such as prefixes, roots, and suffixes. It helps students work out unfamiliar word meanings and spellings.

Hints in the surrounding text, such as definitions, examples, or contrasts, that help a reader infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

The organized background knowledge a reader brings to a text. Activating relevant schema helps readers connect new information to what they already know.

Drawing a conclusion by combining clues in the text with the reader's background knowledge. Skilled comprehenders make inferences to fill gaps the author leaves.

The way information in a text is organized, such as compare-contrast, cause-effect, sequence, or problem-solution. Recognizing structure improves comprehension and memory.

Thinking about one's own thinking. In reading, it means monitoring whether you understand and choosing fix-up strategies when meaning breaks down.

A small-group comprehension routine in which students take turns predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing a text. The teacher models each strategy first.

A brief, universal assessment given to all students to identify who is at risk for reading difficulty and needs closer attention or additional support.

A more detailed assessment used after screening to pinpoint a student's specific strengths and gaps in reading skills, guiding instructional planning.

Brief, frequent assessments of a specific skill given over time to show whether instruction or intervention is working and to adjust it as needed.

A type of brief, standardized measure drawn from the student's curriculum, often used to track growth and evaluate intervention effects across time.

An assessment in which the teacher records a student's oral reading, marking correct words, errors, and self-corrections to analyze accuracy, fluency, and strategy use.

Examining a reader's oral reading errors to judge whether they are meaning-based, syntax-based, or visual, revealing which strategies the reader is using.

A school-wide framework that provides increasingly intensive levels of instruction and intervention matched to students' assessed needs, with progress monitored at every tier.

A neurobiological, language-based learning disability causing persistent difficulty with accurate and fluent word reading, decoding, and spelling, despite adequate instruction and ability.

Teaching the specialized ways of reading, writing, and thinking used in a particular subject, such as evaluating evidence in science or sourcing documents in history.

Words and phrases widely used across subject areas in school texts and tasks, such as analyze, evidence, and contrast. Direct teaching of these words supports comprehension.

The overall difficulty of a text, judged by quantitative measures like readability, qualitative features like structure and knowledge demands, and the reader's purpose and background.

Questions answerable only by reading and citing the text closely, rather than by relying on prior experience or opinion. They push students to support claims with evidence.