ALLegany-LimestONE Central School District

PhonemicAwareness:

Phonemic awareness isthe ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds-phonemes--inspoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become moreaware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are madeup of speech sounds, or phonemes (the smallest parts of sound in a spoken wordthat make a difference in a word's meaning).

Phonics:

Theunderstanding that letters and combinationsof letters are the symbols used to represent the speech sounds; and the idea that there aresystematic and predictable relationships between written letters, symbols, andspoken words is known as the alphabeticprinciple within the English language. The alphabetic principle is thefoundation of any alphabeticwriting system, which is one of the more common types of writing systemsin use today.

Phonics involvesteaching how to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups ofletters.

(Phonological awareness refers to an individual'sawareness of the sound structure, or phonological structure,of a spoken word.It includes the ability to auditorily distinguish units of speech, such as aword's syllables and a syllable's individual phonemes. The ability to segment and blendphonemes is critical for the development of decoding skills, readingfluency,and spelling. Phonological awareness is an important and reliablepredictor of later reading ability and has, therefore, been the focus of much research.Phonological awareness is often confused with phonics, but it is different. Phonicsrequires students to match letters or letter patterns with sounds (decoding)and to use this information to read words. Phonological awareness relates onlyto speech sounds, not to alphabet letters or sound-spellings. Phonemic awarenessis a subset of phonological awareness.)

Fluency:

Theability to read accurately, quickly, effortlessly,and with appropriateexpression and meaning can be referred to as a person’s reading fluency.

Vocabulary:

Vocabulary is the studyof: 1. The meanings of words. Many words have several different meanings each.It is studying the meaningsof the words and the part of speech that belongs to it. 2. How the words areused. This involves studying the words in context, applying what you learn bywriting sentences with your words. 3. Root words, prefixes, suffixes. Studyingthese will aid in the study of vocabulary. 4. Analogies: This is comparing twopairs of words and choosing the pair that go together.

Comprehension:

An ability to understandthe meaningor importance of something (or the knowledge acquired as a result)is what we call comprehension.