1. Close Reading

Definition: A careful and purposeful reading of a text, focusing on significant details or patterns to develop a deep understanding of its meaning, structure, and purpose.

Classroom Example: Students annotate a short story to identify figurative language and analyze character motivation.

2. Comprehension Strategies

Definition: Deliberate techniques used by readers to understand, remember, and communicate what they read. These include summarizing, predicting, questioning, visualizing, and clarifying.

Classroom Example: Students pause during independent reading to summarize paragraphs and make predictions about what will happen next.

3. Critical Literacy

Definition: An approach to reading that emphasizes understanding the relationship between language and power, encouraging readers to analyze texts for bias, assumptions, and underlying ideologies.

Classroom Example: Students evaluate an advertisement to discuss how visual and language choices influence perception.

4. Decoding

Definition: The ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words.

Classroom Example: A student sounds out the letters in the word “ship” using their knowledge of digraphs.

5. Fluency

Definition: The ability to read text accurately, quickly, and with expression. Fluency bridges word recognition and comprehension and is essential for understanding what is read.

Classroom Example: A student reads a passage aloud with appropriate pacing, tone, and intonation.

6. Phonemic Awareness

Definition: The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds—phonemes—in spoken words. It is a foundational skill for learning to read and is distinct from phonics, which involves written letters.

Classroom Example: A teacher plays a game where students identify the first sound in spoken words.

7. Reading Levels

Definition: A framework for matching readers with texts of appropriate complexity. Levels are based on vocabulary, sentence structure, and conceptual demands and are used to support differentiated instruction.

8. Text Structures

Definition: The organizational patterns authors use to present information in nonfiction texts, such as cause and effect, compare and contrast, chronological order, and problem-solution.

Classroom Example: Students use graphic organizers to identify and compare different structures in informational texts.

9. Vocabulary Development

Definition: The process of acquiring new words and deepening understanding of known words. Vocabulary knowledge supports reading comprehension, writing, and oral communication.

10. Writing Process

Definition: A recursive set of stages writers follow to produce effective text: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.

11. Phonics

Definition: A method of teaching reading that focuses on the relationship between letters and sounds. Students learn to connect graphemes (written letters) with phonemes (spoken sounds) to decode words.

Classroom Example: A teacher explicitly teaches students that the letter ‘c’ makes a /k/ sound in “cat” and a /s/ sound in “city.”

Citation: Adams, M. J. (1990). *Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print*. MIT Press.

12. Reading Comprehension

Definition: The ability to understand and interpret what is read. It involves constructing meaning from text by integrating prior knowledge with new information.

Classroom Example: After reading a historical document, students discuss its main idea, supporting details, and the author’s purpose.

Citation: RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). *Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension*. RAND Corporation.

13. Text Complexity

Definition: A measure of the difficulty of a text, considering factors such as quantitative measures (e.g., Lexile level), qualitative features (e.g., levels of meaning, structure), and reader and task considerations.

Classroom Example: A teacher selects a novel for a class based on its Lexile score and the complexity of its themes, ensuring it’s appropriate for their students’ reading abilities.

Citation: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). *Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects*.

14. Schema Theory

Definition: A cognitive theory that explains how readers use their existing knowledge (schemas) to understand and organize new information from a text. Comprehension involves activating and building upon relevant schemas.

Classroom Example: Before reading about ancient Egypt, a teacher activates students’ prior knowledge about civilizations, pyramids, or deserts to help them connect with the new content.

Citation: Rumelhart, D. E. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce, & W. F. Brewer (Eds.), *Theoretical issues in reading comprehension* (pp. 33-58). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

15. Reciprocal Teaching

Definition: An instructional strategy for reading comprehension where students and teachers take turns leading discussions, using four main strategies: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing.

Classroom Example: In a small group, students take on roles to discuss a challenging nonfiction article, helping each other understand complex vocabulary and main ideas.

Citation: Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. *Cognition and Instruction*, *1*(2), 117–175.