Vra Vocabulary

Front 1

Affix

Back 1

A morpheme or meaningful part of a word attached before or after a root or base
word to modify its meaning; a category that includes prefixes and suffixes.

Front 2

Alphabetic principle

Back 2

The use of letters and letter combinations to represent phonemes in an
orthography.

Front 3

Consonant

Back 3

A phoneme that is not a vowel and is formed with obstruction of the flow of air
with the teeth, lips, or tongue; also called a closed sound in some instructional
programs; English has 40 or more consonants; also may refer to an alphabet letter
used in representing any of these sounds

Front 4

Automaticity

Back 4

Fluent performance without the conscious deployment of attention.

Front 5

Base word

Back 5

A free morpheme, usually of Anglo-Saxon origin, to which affixes can be added.

Front 6

Blend

Back 6

A consonant sequence before or after a vowel within a syllable, such as cl, br, or st;
also called "consonant blend."

Front 7

Book talk

Back 7

A discussion of one or more books by a teacher, librarian, or student to introduce
books and to induce others to read them.

Front 8

Bound morpheme

Back 8

A morpheme, usually of Latin origin in English, that cannot stand alone but is
used to form a family of words with related meanings. A bound root (such as –fer)
has meaning only in combination with a prefix and/or a suffix.

Front 9

Cloze procedure

Back 9

Any of several ways of measuring a person's ability to restore omitted portions of
an oral or written message by reading its remaining context.

Front 10

Comprehension monitoring

Back 10

The mental act of knowing when one does and does not understand what one is
reading.

Front 11

Etymology

Back 11

The study of the history and development of the structures and meanings of words;
derivation.

Front 12

Consonant digraph

Back 12

Written letter combination that corresponds to one speech sound but is not
represented by either letter alone, such as th or ph.

Front 13

Context

Back 13

The sounds, words, or phrases adjacent to a spoken or written language unit.

Front 14

Context clue

Back 14

Information from the immediate textual setting that helps identify a word or word
group, as by words, phrases, sentences, illustrations, syntax, or typography.

Front 15

Contextual analysis

Back 15

The search for the meaning of an unknown word through an examination of its
context; the use of a larger linguistic unit to determine the meaning of a smaller unit

Front 16

Continuant

Back 16

Speech sound that can be spoken uninterrupted until the speaker runs out of breath
(/m/, /s/, /v/).

Front 17

Decodable text

Back 17

Text in which a large proportion of words (approximately 70%–80%) comprise
sound-symbol relationships that have already been taught; used to provide practice
with specific decoding skills and to form a bridge between learning phonics and
applying phonics in independent reading of text.

Front 18

Decoding

Back 18

Ability to translate a word from print to speech, usually by employing knowledge
of sound-symbol correspondences; also, the act of deciphering a new word by
sounding it out.

Front 19

Dialect

Back 19

A social or regional variety of a particular language with phonological,
grammatical, and lexical patterns that distinguish it from other varieties.

Front 20

ESL students

Back 20

Students who are learning English as a second language; Limited English
Proficiency (LEP) students.

Front 21

Expressive vocabulary

Back 21

The vocabulary used to communicate in speaking and writing.

Front 22

Figurative language

Back 22

Language enriched by word images and figures of speech.

Front 23

Figure of speech

Back 23

The expressive, nonliteral use of language for special effects, usually through
images, as in metaphor and personification.

Front 24

Free morpheme

Back 24

A morpheme that can stand alone in word formation.

Front 25

Invented spelling

Back 25

The result of an attempt to spell a word whose spelling is not already known,
based on a writer's knowledge of the spelling system and how it works; also
referred to as "temporary spelling" or "developmental spelling."

Front 26

Intonation

Back 26

Pitch level of the voice.

Front 27

Inflection

Back 27

A bound morpheme that combines with base words to indicate tense, number,
mood, person, or gender.

Front 28

Idiom

Back 28

An expression whose meaning may be unrelated to the meaning of its parts.

Front 29

High-frequency word

Back 29

A word that appears many more times than most other words in spoken or written
language.

Front 30

Grapheme

Back 30

A letter or letter combination that spells a single phoneme; in English, a grapheme
may be one, two, three, or four letters, such as e, ei, igh, or eigh.

Front 31

Minimal pair

Back 31

A pair of words that contrast only in one phoneme.

Front 32

KWL

Back 32

A strategy developed by Donna Ogle that is especially useful for identifying
purposes for reading expository text. The strategy, which typically involves the
use of a graphic organizer, prompts the reader to consider What I Know (K),
What I Want To Learn (W), and What I Have Learned (L).

Front 33

Language Experience Approach (LEA)

Back 33

An approach to language learning in which students' oral compositions are
transcribed and used as materials of instruction for reading, writing, speaking, and
listening.

Front 34

LEP students

Back 34

Students with limited English proficiency; students who are learning English as a
second language (ESL).

Front 35

Literature circle

Back 35

That part of a literature-based reading program in which students meet to discuss
books they are reading independently. Note: The books discussed are usually sets
of the same title, sets of different titles by one author, or sets of titles with a
common theme.

Front 36

Metalinguistic

Back 36

Pertaining to an acquired awareness of language structure and function that allows
one to reflect on and consciously manipulate the language.

Front 37

Miscue

Back 37

A deviation from text during oral reading or a shift in comprehension of a passage.

Front 38

Miscue analysis

Back 38

A formal examination of the use of miscues as the basis for determining the
strengths and weaknesses in the background experiences and language skills of
students as they read.

Front 39

Phonetic

Back 39

Referring to the nature, production, and transcription of speech sounds.

Front 40

Morpheme

Back 40

The smallest meaningful unit of language.

Front 41

Morphology

Back 41

The study of meaningful units of language and how they are combined in word
formation.

Front 42

Multisyllabic

Back 42

Having more than one syllable.

Front 43

Narrative text

Back 43

Text, usually with the structure of a story, that tells about sequences of fictional or
real events and is often contrasted with expository text.

Front 44

Onset

Back 44

The part of a syllable before the vowel; some syllables do not have onsets.

Front 45

Orthography

Back 45

A writing system; correct or standardized spelling according to established usage
in a given language.

Front 46

Phoneme

Back 46

A speech sound that combines with others in a language system to make words.

Front 47

Phonemic awareness

Back 47

The conscious awareness that words are made up of segments of our own speech
that are represented with letters in an alphabetic orthography; also called phoneme
awareness.

Front 48

Phonics

Back 48

The study of the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent; also
used to describe reading instruction that teaches sound-symbol correspondences.

Front 49

Reading fluency

Back 49

Speed of reading; also, the bility to read text with sufficient speed to support
comprehension.

Front 50

R-controlled

Back 50

Pertaining to a vowel immediately followed by the consonant /r/, such that its
pronunciation is affected or even dominated by the /r/.

Front 51

Prefix

Back 51

A morpheme that precedes a root or base word and that contributes to or modifies
the meaning of a word; a common linguistic unit in Latin-based words.

Front 52

Phonological awareness

Back 52

Metalinguistic awareness of all levels of the speech sound system, including word
boundaries, stress patterns, syllables, onset-rime units, and phonemes; a more
encompassing term than phoneme awareness.

Front 53

Phonogram

Back 53

In word recognition, a graphic sequence comprised of a vowel grapheme and an
ending consonant grapheme, as –ed in red, bed, fed or –ake in bake, cake, lake. Also
known as "word family."

Front 54

Syntax

Back 54

The rule system governing sentence formation; the study of sentence structure

Front 55

Rime

Back 55

A linguistic term for the part of a syllable that includes the vowel and what follows
it; different from the language play activity of rhyming.

Front 56

Root

Back 56

A morpheme, usually of Latin origin in English, that cannot stand alone but that is
used to form a family of words with related meanings.

Front 57

Semantic cue

Back 57

Evidence from the general sense or meaning of a written or spoken
communication that aids in the identification of an unknown word.

Front 58

Semantic properties

Back 58

The component features of the meaning of a word.

Front 59

Sight words

Back 59

Words that are known as wholes, do not have to be sounded out to be recognized
quickly, and are often taught and learned as "exception," out-law," or
"nonphonetic" words.

Front 60

Structural analysis

Back 60

The identification of word-meaning elements, as re and read in reread, to help
understand the meaning of a word as a whole; morphemic analysis.

Front 61

Suffix

Back 61

A morpheme, added to a root or base word, that often changes the word's part of
speech and that modifies its meaning.

Front 62

Syllable

Back 62

Unit of pronunciation that is organized around a vowel; it may or may not have
consonants before or after the vowel.

Front 63

Syntactic cue

Back 63

Evidence from knowledge of the rules and patterns of language that aids in the
identification of an unknown word from the way it is used in a grammatical
construction.

Front 64

Vowel

Back 64

An open phoneme that is the nucleus of every syllable and is classified by tongue
position and height, such as high/low or front/mid/back; English has 15 vowel
phonemes.

Front 65

Vowel combination

Back 65

A spelling pattern in which two or more adjoining letters represent a single vowel
sound (e.g., ea for /e/ in bread, oa for /o/ in boat); also called vowel pattern,
vowel digraph, vowel pair, or vowel team.

Front 66

Marie Clay

Back 66

Concepts About Print

Front 67

Yetta Goodman

Back 67

Kid-watching

Front 68

Piaget

Back 68

Constructivism

Front 69

Piaget's Stages

Back 69

Sensory motor 0-2
Preoperational 3-7
Concrete Operational 7-11
Formal Operational 11-adult

Front 70

Schemata

Back 70

A scaffold of information
assimilate
accomodate

Front 71

Vygotsky

Back 71

Sociolinguistics
Scaffolding
ZPD

Front 72

Rosenblatt

Back 72

Reader's Theater

Front 73

Fontaus and Pinnell

Back 73

Leveled Books

Front 74

Montessori

Back 74

Italian educator
Self-directed learning by the student
observation by the teacher

Front 75

Cummins

Back 75

BICS
CALPS

Front 76

BICS

Back 76

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills

Front 77

CALPS

Back 77

Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency

Front 78

RTI

Back 78

Response to Intervention
Screening and Prevention
Early Intervention
Intensive Intervention