Glossary

A

Audience - The intended group of readers, listeners or viewers that the writer, designer, filmmaker or speaker is addressing.

B 

Blend - To combine sounds to make a word. It involves pulling together individual sounds or syllables within words. 

C 

Clause - Is a complete message or thought expressed in words. The essential component of a clause is a finite verb or verb group, for example 'She played in the sandpit', 'Max was running home'.

• A main clause (also known as a principal or independent clause) is a clause that can stand alone as a complete sentence, though it may be joined with other clauses, for example 'The child came first'.

• A subordinate clause (also known as a dependent clause) is a group of words that cannot stand alone or make complete sense on its own. It needs to be combined with a main clause to form a complete sentence. Subordinate clauses will usually be adjectival or adverbial clauses.

• An adjectival clause is a clause that provides information which defines the qualities or characteristics of the person or thing named. It usually begins with a relative pronoun and is sometimes called a relative clause, for example, 'The child who had the red top came first'.

• An adverbial clause is a clause that modifies the verb in the main clause, for example, 'The child came first because he was the fastest runner'.

• An embedded clause occurs within the structure of another clause, often as a qualifier to a noun group, for example, 'The man who came to dinner is my brother'.

Comprehend  - to understand  and make sense of text: spoken, written and/or visual. It is an active and complex process which includes the act of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning from the text.

D

Decode words - The process in which knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, is used to identify written words. 

E

Expression or Prosody, the defining feature of expressive reading, comprises all of the variables of timing, phrasing, emphasis, and intonation that speakers use to help convey aspects of meaning and to make their speech lively.

Expressive language - Is a broad term that describes how a person communicates their wants and needs. It encompasses verbal and nonverbal communication skills and how an individual uses language. Receptive language skills describe the comprehension of language.

F

Fluency  - Ease of flow, for example in talking, reading, handwriting and spelling. 

Form - Language forms and features of imaginative, persuasive and informative text 

Formative assessment - The process of identifying, gathering and interpreting information about students’ learning to provide information on student achievement and progress and set the direction for ongoing teaching and learning. It is designed to enhance teaching and ultimately improve learning outcomes. 

Formal observations - Are planned with a predetermined focus. The teacher decides when and how formal observations will occur and how they will be recorded. It is beneficial to focus observations on a particular group of five to six students daily.

G

Grapheme - A letter or combination of letters that corresponds to or represents phonemes, for example, the f in frog, the ph in phone, the gh in cough.

H - I

Immersed - To involve oneself deeply in a particular activity. 

Instructional level - Can pertain to decodable, simple, predictable, and moderately complex texts read with an accuracy of 90-94 percent.

Intervention - Is the act or instance of proactively providing additional support and/or specialised services to empower, build skills, enhance wellbeing, foster learning and manage the situation.

J - K - L

Learning intention - A brief statement that explicitly describes what students should know, understand or be able to do.  They are written in student-friendly language and are visible in classrooms for students to reference. A learning intention is developed directly from the syllabus outcomes that are clustered together for teaching purposes. The learning intention can start with the sentence stem "We are learning to..." 

Learning and teaching cycle  - involves four key stages which incorporate social support for reading, writing and speaking and listening through varied interactional routines (whole group, small group, pair, individual) to scaffold students’ learning about language and meaning in a variety of texts. These stages are:

• Building the context or field - understanding the role of texts in our culture and building shared understanding of the topic 

• Modelling the text (or deconstruction) - the use of mentor or model texts to focus explicitly on the structure and the language of the text, how language choices work to shape meaning, and to build a metalanguage

• Guided practice (or joint construction) - teachers and students jointly constructing a text 

• Independent construction – students’ independent writing or approximation of the genre.

Listen in -  When students are reading silently the teacher asks a student to briefly read aloud from where they are up to. 

M

Metalanguage - Language (which can include technical terms, concepts, ideas or codes) used to describe and discuss a language. The language of grammar and the language of literary criticism are two examples of metalanguage. 

Manipulate sounds -  Is the ability of children to manipulate or work with individual sounds in spoken words. 

N - O

Onset/rime - The phonological units of a spoken syllable. A syllable can normally be divided into two parts: the onset which consists of the initial consonant or consonant blend and the rime which consists of the vowel and any final consonants. For example: bark b (onset), ark (rime) inside (no onset), in (rime), s (onset), ide (rime).

P

Phoneme - The smallest sound unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinct meaning

Phonemic manipulation - Is the ability of children to manipulate or work with individual sounds in spoken words. 

Phonological knowledge - It refers to the ability to recognise that words are made up of a variety of sound units, for example, single sounds (phonemes) and blends. It includes the ability to:

• attend to and segment the sound stream into 'chunks' of sound known as syllables. Each syllable begins with a sound (onset) and ends with another sound (rime), eg: 

• d-og – onset and rime

• el/e/phant – syllables

• know letter-sound relationships and how to use these to read words (including understanding of the blending process)

• understand that there is a systematic relationship between letters and sounds (the alphabetic principle).

Purpose - The purpose of a text, in very broad terms, is to entertain, to inform or to persuade different audiences in different contexts. Composers use a number of ways to achieve these purposes: persuading through emotive language, analysis or factual recount; entertaining through description, imaginative writing or humour, and so on.

Prior knowledge - Prior knowledge is the unique set of knowledge each individual student brings to the reading experience. It is a combination of the student’s attitudes, experiences, and knowledge. By knowledge we mean: What the student already knows about the reading process, Vocabulary knowledge, Topic knowledge, Concept knowledge, Text types or genres and the language features of these.

Prosody - appropriate expression, emphasis and pause. 

Q - R

Range of texts - Texts created to achieve certain purposes. i.e. Personal (expressive) texts, including letters, diaries, journals, and notes. Imaginative (narratives) texts, including stories, fairytales, poems, and play scripts. Informative (expository) texts, including reports, explanations, procedures, and persuasive writing.

Receptive language - means the ability to understand information. It involves understanding the words, sentences and meaning of what others say or what is read. Expressive language means being able to put thoughts into words and sentences, in a way that makes sense and is grammatically accurate.

Response to Intervention - is a multi-tier approach to the early identification and support for students with learning and behaviour needs. It begins with high quality instruction and universal screening of all children in general education settings with some learners provided with interventions at increasing levels of intensity to accelerate their rate of learning.

Rhyme - a word that is identical to another in its terminal sound "while'' is a rhyme for "mile''

S

Segment - To separate or divide a word into sounds (phonemes). This can include segmenting words without pauses (stretching a word), for example, mmmaaattt, and segmenting words with a pause between each unit of sound, for example, / m / a / t /.

Success criteria - Is criteria that is directly related to the learning intentions that are developed from syllabus outcomes. They should be visible and available in classrooms so that students can use them as a reference while they are doing their work and against which they can measure progress towards their own goals for improvement. They should be co-constructed by teachers and students. "I can..." 

Syllable - A unit of sound within a word containing a single vowel sound, for example, won/der/ful, yes/ter/day.

Synthetic phonics - Systematic instruction establishes what will be taught and the order of instruction building on the knowledge and skills a student must have in order to learn.

Summative assessment - Assessment at the end of the unit - through observation, conversations with students, examination of products, comparing student work against success criteria and A- E reporting. The process of communicating information about student achievement and progress gained from the assessment process.

T

Text  - Communications of meaning produced in any media that incorporates language, including sound, print, film, electronic and multimedia representations. Texts include written, spoken, non-verbal, visual or multimodal communications of meaning. They may be extended unified works, a series of related pieces or a single, simple piece of communication. 

Tier 1 - Core Instruction for all occurs. Classroom Intervention, Screening Assessment, Differentiated Instruction by developmental level and learning style 

Tier 2  - Small group, targeted intervention 

Tier 3  - Individualised, intensive instruction/intervention

Think alouds -  With this strategy, teachers verbalize aloud while reading a selection orally. Their verbalisations include describing things they're doing as they read to monitor their comprehension. The purpose of the think-aloud strategy is to model for students how skilled readers construct meaning from a text. 

Types of Text - Classifications according to the particular purposes texts are designed to achieve. These purposes influence the characteristic features the texts employ. In general, texts can be classified as belonging to one of three types (imaginative, informative or persuasive), although it is acknowledged that these distinctions are neither static nor watertight and particular texts can belong to more than one category.

U - V - W

Word Awareness - the knowledge that words have meaning. Students with word awareness can discriminate individual words in a passage read to them.

X - Y - Z

Zone proximal development - Is a concept that was created by influential psychologist Lev Vygotsky. According to Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development is: "the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." (Vygotsky, 1978)