Comprehensive Definition Tracking sheets are simple data collection tools used to record and monitor how students are progressing towards mastery of specific skills over time. Rather than capturing a single snapshot, they build a record, so a teacher can see at a glance who has secured a skill, who is approaching it, and who is […]
Comprehensive Definition Tier 1 is the high-quality core instruction that every student receives. It is the foundation of a Response to Intervention or multi-tiered system, and its purpose is prevention: when core instruction is strong, most students learn to read and spell without needing anything extra. It is characterised by explicit and systematic teaching delivered […]
Comprehensive Definition Tier 2 is supplemental, targeted support for students identified as at risk, provided in addition to high-quality Tier 1 instruction, not instead of it. It is delivered to small groups, is focused on specific skills the data shows are not yet secure, and is guided by regular progress monitoring so that it can […]
Comprehensive Definition Tier 3 is the most intensive level of support, for the small number of students who have not responded sufficiently to strong Tier 1 and Tier 2. It is more intensive on every dimension: smaller groups or one-to-one teaching, more frequent and often longer sessions, a narrower focus on foundational skills, and highly […]
Comprehensive Definition Tiered vocabulary is a way of classifying words by how useful and how widely applicable they are, so that teaching time is spent where it has the most impact. The framework comes from the work of Isabel Beck and colleagues and sorts words into three tiers. Tier 1: basic, everyday words that most children […]
Comprehensive Definition A vowel team is a grapheme made of two or more letters that work together to represent a single vowel sound, as in ai (rain), ee (feet), oa (boat) and igh (night). The letters sit together as a unit and are not separated by a consonant. Vowel teams are essential for reading and […]
Comprehensive Definition Visual discrimination is the ability to notice differences and similarities between visual symbols, such as telling b from d, or was from saw. It plays a part in reading, since a reader must perceive the distinct shapes of letters, but how important is often overstated from non-evidence based assessments or intervention. Skilled reading […]
Comprehensive Definition Word recognition is the ability to identify a printed word and retrieve its pronunciation and meaning. In skilled readers this happens instantly and with no apparent effort. It is one of the two strands of the Simple View of Reading, in which reading comprehension is the product of word recognition and language comprehension, […]
Comprehensive Definition The Zone of Proximal Development is the gap between what a student can do independently and what they can do with support from a more knowledgeable person. It comes from the work of Lev Vygotsky. Learning is most productive when instruction is aimed at this zone, at skills the student cannot yet manage […]
Comprehensive Definition A grapheme is the written representation of a phoneme. It is the smallest unit of written language that maps to a single sound in spoken language. A grapheme can be a single letter, as in the "p" of "pat", or a group of letters acting as a single unit, as in the "sh" […]
Comprehensive Definition A compound word is a word formed by joining two or more existing, independent base words to create a new word with a distinct meaning. Each part of a compound word is a standalone base word that can function on its own (e.g., sun + flower = sunflower). Compound words are an important […]
Comprehensive Definition A criterion-referenced assessment measures a student's performance against a fixed standard, criterion, or set of learning objectives, rather than comparing them to other students. The question it answers is: "What can this student do?" or "Has this student mastered this specific skill or content?" The student's score tells you whether they have met […]
Comprehensive Definition Code-Emphasis Instruction (or Phonics-First Teaching) is an approach to reading instruction that places primary and explicit focus on teaching the Alphabetic Principle and the systematic relationships between letters and sounds. This instruction is sequential, cumulative, and explicit. The fundamental belief is that the most efficient path to reading proficiency is through decoding, teaching […]
Comprehensive Definition Cumulative Review or spaced repetition is a teaching strategy that involves revisiting previously taught skills and content at regular intervals after the initial instruction. Instead of treating a skill as "finished," cumulative review integrates past concepts into current lessons. This approach directly counteracts the forgetting curve. The well documented tendency for newly learned […]
Comprehensive Definition Coarticulation (or speech sound transition) is the process where the production of a speech sound (phoneme) is influenced by, and often overlaps with, the production of surrounding sounds. Rather than producing each sound in a neat, isolated sequence, the articulators (the lips, tongue, jaw, and soft palate) begin moving into position for the […]
Comprehensive Definition Connected text (or passage reading) refers to sequences of words organised into sentences, paragraphs, or stories. It is any text that carries meaning across a sequence of connected ideas, as opposed to isolated word lists or individual words presented for decoding practice. Moving from isolated word reading to connected text is a critical […]
Comprehensive Definition A consonant-vowel-consonant word is a word with a three-phoneme structure: a single consonant sound, a single short vowel sound, and a final single consonant sound (for example, cat, sun, ship, duck). The label describes the sound structure of the word, not the number of letters or the type of graphemes used to represent […]
Comprehensive Definition Decodable reading books, also referred to as decodable texts or decodable readers, are instructional materials used to support early reading development within Systematic Synthetic Phonics. They are carefully constructed so that the vast majority of words in the text (typically between 70 and 90 percent or higher, depending on the publisher and stage […]
Comprehensive Definition A diagnostic assessment is an in-depth, formal evaluation used to identify the specific underlying causes of a student's literacy difficulty. Where a screening assessment answers the question "Who in this cohort is at risk?", a diagnostic assessment answers "What exactly is going wrong for this student, and why?" Diagnostic testing sits within a […]
Comprehensive Definition Explicit instruction is a teacher-directed, systematic, and highly structured approach to teaching in which new skills are broken into small, manageable units, clearly modelled, and practised with feedback before students are expected to apply them independently. It stands in deliberate contrast to discovery or inquiry-based approaches, which require students to infer rules and […]
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