ReferenceFor families

Structured literacy glossary.

The plain-language meaning of the reading terms parents, tutors and clinicians run into: the sounds and letters reading is built from, the six syllable types, the parts of words, and the skills and approach behind teaching a child to read. No sign-up, free to use and share.

Sounds and letters

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound in a spoken word. The word cat has three phonemes: /k/, /a/, /t/.

Grapheme

The letter or letters that spell one phoneme. In ship, the letters sh are one grapheme for the sound /sh/.

Phonemic awareness

The ability to hear and work with the individual sounds in spoken words, apart from letters. Also called sound awareness. Sound and letter games.

Decoding

Translating printed letters into the sounds they stand for in order to read a word.

Encoding

The reverse of decoding: turning the sounds in a spoken word into letters to spell it.

Blending

Pushing individual sounds together to say a whole word: /m/ /a/ /p/ becomes map.

Segmenting

Breaking a spoken word into its separate sounds: map becomes /m/ /a/ /p/.

Digraph

Two letters that spell one sound, such as sh, ch, th or ck. How to teach digraphs.

Trigraph

Three letters that spell one sound, such as tch in match or igh in night.

Consonant blend

Two or three consonants together where each sound is still heard, such as st in stop or spl in splash.

Syllable types

Closed syllable

A syllable with one vowel followed by one or more consonants; the vowel is short, as in cat or the first part of napkin. How to teach closed syllables.

Open syllable

A syllable that ends in a vowel; the vowel is usually long, as in he or the first part of robot.

Silent-e syllable

A vowel, a consonant, then a silent e that makes the vowel long, as in cake or bike. How to teach silent-e.

R-controlled syllable

A vowel followed by r, which changes the vowel's sound, as in car, her or bird. How to teach r-controlled vowels.

Vowel team syllable

Two vowels working together to spell one sound, as in rain, boat or seed.

Consonant-le syllable

A final syllable made of a consonant plus le, as in table or little.

Word parts

Morpheme

The smallest unit of meaning in a word. Unhelpful has three: un, help and ful.

Prefix

A word part added to the front of a base word that changes its meaning, such as re in rewrite.

Suffix

A word part added to the end of a base word, such as ing in reading or ful in helpful.

High-frequency word

A word that appears very often in text. Many are fully decodable; a few have an irregular part that has to be learned by sight. Teaching sight words that stick.

Skills and approach

Orthographic mapping

The process by which a reader connects a word's sounds to its spelling, so the word is stored and recognized instantly. Word mapping.

Fluency

Reading with enough accuracy, speed and expression that attention is freed for understanding. Building reading fluency.

Scope and sequence

The planned order in which reading skills are taught, from simplest to most complex. The scope and sequence.

Multisensory instruction

Teaching that links seeing, hearing, saying and movement so a skill is learned through more than one channel at once.