STR Vocabulary (Competency 001)

Morpheme:

Smallest unit of meaning in a word (e.g., unwise--two morphemes (un wise), walked--two morphemes (walk ed)).

Partner reading:

Students read aloud with a partner, taking turns to provide word identification help and feedback.

Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines:

Guidelines delineating behaviors and skills that prekindergarten children should be able to do. Available at https://tea.texas.gov/academics/early-childhood-education/texas-prekindergarten-guidelines.

Dyslexia:

A broad label defining a learning disability that affects language processing, often leading to difficulty with reading.

National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth:

A group of bilingual education and literacy professionals brought together in the early 2000s to examine the research about the development of literacy in language minority children.

National Early Literacy Panel:

A group of early childhood and literacy professionals brought together in 2002 by the federal government to review research on the development of early literacy skills.

Thematic unit:

A group of lessons that integrate the language arts and that cut across two or more subject areas on a particular theme or topic.

National Reading Panel:

A group of literacy professionals brought together by the federal government to review reading research and issue recommendations. Their report, issued in 2000, was highly influential in reading instruction.

Response to Intervention (RTI):

A multileveled instructional and prevention system to monitor and support readers who may need extra help.

Dysgraphia:

A severe difficulty in producing handwriting that is legible and written at an age-appropriate speed.

Inflectional suffix:

A suffix that creates a new form of the same word. It may express: · plurality or possession when added to a noun (e.g., cats, computers) · tense when added to a verb (e.g., racing, helped) · comparison when added to an adjective and some adverbs (e.g., greenest)

Think alouds:

A teaching method where the teacher explicitly shares their thinking processes during reading by verbalizing what they do as they read.

Modeling:

A teaching procedure where the teacher overtly demonstrates a strategy, skill or concept that the students will learn.

Explicit Instruction:

A type of instruction that involves direct explanation of a concept or idea to a student. The teacher's language is concise, specific, and related to the objective. The actions of the teacher are clear, unambiguous, direct and visible.

Nonreader:

An individual who is unable to read connected text, despite normal intelligence, lack of sensory deficits, absence of obvious neurological challenges, and much reading instruction.

Guided reading:

An instructional practice where small groups of students with similar needs meet for instruction from the teacher and can practice a new skill with the support of the teacher.

Flexible grouping:

Grouping students according to shared instructional needs and abilities and regrouping as their instructional needs change. Group size and allocated instructional time may vary among groups.

Scope and sequence:

The overall 'roadmap' for a skills-based instructional program showing what content will be taught and what order it will be taught in.

Emergent literacy

The reading and writing experiences children participate in before they begin formal schooling.

Phoneme:

The smallest unit of sound in a word. In English there are approximately 44 phonemes.

Scaffolding:

The support given to students in order for them to arrive at the correct answer or to learn a concept. This temporary support assists the student in achieving what they otherwise could not achieve alone.

Direct instruction:

The teacher defines and teaches a concept, guides students through its application, and arranges for guided practice until mastery is achieved.

Assets-based approach:

a teaching philosophy and method that builds on students' strengths and what they can do rather than their deficits. Student strengths include cultural, family, and linguistic background, among other things.

Derivational affix

an affix that changes one word to another (e.g., red to redden; empathy to empathize)

Semantics:

definitions of words

Pragmatics:

how language is used in certain contexts

Data-based decision-making:

making decisions for the school, grade level, or classroom based on actual data rather than just intuition.

Prosody:

reading with expression, proper intonation, and phrasing. Part of reading fluency.

Syntax:

sentence structure in both oral and written language.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS):

state standards for what children should be able to know and do, organized by grade level and available at https://tea.texas.gov/academics/curriculum-standards/teks/texas-essential-knowledge-and-skills

Differentiated Instruction

tailoring curriculum and pedagogy to meet students' individual needs.

Evidence-based practices:

teaching practices based in research and professional wisdom.

Fidelity of implementation:

the degree to which an intervention, curriculum or program is delivered as intended.

Language arts:

the study of language, including reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Viewing and representing is sometimes also included in the language arts.

Phonology:

the way a word is pronounced. One of the components of oral language.

Morphology:

the way words are formed: inflectional endings, etc.

Discourse:

written or spoken communication

Stages of Reading Development

· Pre-Reading or Pre-Alphabetic · Beginning- initial reading and decoding stage or partial to full alphabetic stage · Transitional- confirmation and fluency stage or consolidated-alphabetic stage · Intermediate- reading to learn new content · Advanced- multiple viewpoints stage