*Phoneme: the smallest unit of sound represented by a letter or letters. There are 44 phonemes in the English language.
*Grapheme: the letter or letters that represent a phoneme.
*Phonemic awareness: the ability to identify, hear and manipulate the smallest sounds heard in spoken language, phonemes.
*Word Mapping: the process of a breaking a word down into its phonemes and writing the graphemes that represent the phonemes.
*Heart words: high frequency words that have a "tricky part" that cannot be decoded.
*Decoding (reading): translating print to speech.
*Encoding (spelling): translating speech to print.
*Language Comprehension: a child's ability to understand the meaning of words and speech.
*Fluency: the ability to read accuractely, at an appropriate speed, and with proper expression.