Acronym: A word made up of the initial letters of words in a phrase or sentence; examples include NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

Analogy: A general likeness; partial likeness. In this module, two concepts (one new, the other familiar) with partial similarity are compared to enhance the understanding of the new concept. For example, a teacher might introduce the new concept of parasitism by comparing it to the more familiar concept of unwanted guest or might compare solving a math problem with solving a mystery.

Background knowledge: A personal reservoir of information on a variety of topics; information retained in one's long-term memory.

Cognition: The process of knowing by thinking, comprehending, analyzing, or evaluation. Examples: Students use the cognitive process to be able to understand or gain meaning from spoken or written material by reasoning, making inferences, seeing relationships, etc.

Cognitive deficit: Lack of or impairment in the process of knowing by thinking, comprehending, analyzing, or evaluation.

Concept development: The process of gaining an understanding of an idea, or concept.

Conditional knowledge: Within this lesson, knowledge that relates to the contexts and circumstances of using specific procedures, addresses "when," "where," and "why" information.

Content enhancement routine: A systematic teaching procedure for content that involves making decisions about what content to teach, manipulating and translating that content into easy-to-understand formats, and presenting it in ways that are easy to remember.

Content specific knowledge: Words that relate to a given domain of knowledge, such as medical terminology or computer jargon.

Cue-Do-Review sequence: A component of content enhancement routines involving the instructional method used to draw students' attention to the use of a certain instructional process, involve them in that process, and check the effectiveness of that process.

Declarative knowledge: The "what" or content of learning; knowing a piece of information - a fact, a concept, or a label.

Decoding: Relating a sequence of letters in print to their corresponding sounds, allowing the reader to translate the sequence into a word.

Experiential deficit: Not having the experiences necessary for full comprehension of what one is learning. An example would be trying to get a wealthy teenager from the United States to fully understand what is taking place in Sierra Leone. The student would have an experiential deficit in this area because he/she has never experienced what the children in Sierra Leone are experiencing (famine, disease, poverty).

Explicit: Completely and clearly expressed without ambiguity or vagueness; fully developed. Example: Explicit instructions would leave no doubt in your mind about what you were to do. Every part would be "spelled out."

FIRST Letter Mnemonic Strategy: A strategy that students can use to help them master large bodies of information and be able to remember it. Specifically, students create lists of information that is important to learn, generate an appropriate label for each set of information, select a mnemonic device for each set, and create study cards.

Figurative language: Word images that cannot be interpreted literally; types of figurative language include similes ("cute as a button"), metaphors (he was a lion in battle"), idioms ("start from scratch"), personification ("the puppy was indignant"), and hyperbole ("I'm so hungry I could eat a horse").

General knowledge: Information that individuals in a given culture would know from common experiences and use in everyday life.

Gist recall: Remembering with ease the main points about information that has been stored in one's long term memory.

Graphic organizer: Visual depiction of information organized to enhance comprehension of it.

Ideational scaffolding: External support provided by teachers in which they present easier or known content and skills to students as a bridge to learning new or difficult material.

Idiomatic expression: A phrase, statement, or expression the meaning of which is not obvious from a literal interpretation. Examples include "with a grain of salt," and "born with a silver spoon in one's mouth."

Keyword device: Method of remembering a new word by linking it to a known word that looks or sounds like the new one. For example, to remember that the word "drudge" means to do hard, menial, or monotonous work, you might imagine a person working day in and day out in a stifling fudge factory doing nothing but cutting huge slabs of fudge as they rapidly move by on a conveyer belt.

Matthew effects: Briefly stated, the effects of a cycle, in which students with reading disabilities may find themselves. Poor decoding skills limit their ability to advance to more complex texts. This, in turn, limits their exposure to the content, as well as the more complex structure, of texts that are necessary for future learning.

Metacognition: A person's reflection on his or her own thinking processes.

Metalinguistics: A person's reflection on the nature or properties of language or his/her own use of it; an individual's language awareness.

Mnemonic device: Creative device used to aid memory. It can be linguistically based as in a word mnemonic. For example, HOMES gives us the beginning letters of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior and the sentence mnemonic, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, stands for the notes on the staff of the Treble Clef. It can also be visually based, as in mnemonic illustrations which are pictures that help us remember information, such as a picture of a wolf with a hat on that says "canine" on the brim to help remember the species to which wolves belong.

Pegword device: A recall technique involving the use of a memorized series of words to attach to another series of words; examples of peg words are one is bun, two is a shoe, three is a tree, four is a door, five is a hive, six are sticks, seven is heaven, eight is a gate, nine is a line, and ten is a hen.

Procedural knowledge: A type of background knowledge that involves understanding how to do something; the "how" type of knowledge that tells us rules to follow to accomplish a task. An example would be the steps of long division.

Reading comprehension: The process or result of gaining intended and personal meaning from written material.

Recall device: A tool that helps a learner remember information.

Recall enhancement routine: A teaching procedure in which students are guided to identify significant information and create ways to recall it.

Schemata: The plural of schema; a network of many schema; the structures, frames, units, or scripts into which all knowledge is packed and organized.

Strategic instruction: In the context of reading, an educational approach aimed at providing rules or guidelines to help individuals approach reading tasks more effectively, efficiently and independently.

Strategy: A method or plan used to complete a task efficiently, effectively, and independently.

Student-mediated learning: A process in which students take initiative and have the skills to learn on their own.

Syntax: The ordering of words within phrases, clauses, and sentences whereby the relations among the words are indicated. For example, in English, verbs usually follow nouns, and adjectives usually precede nouns.

Tactic: An approach a teacher uses to help a student learn.

Teaching device: An instructional technique, procedure, or tactic designed to promote learning. A teaching device is associated with facilitating organization, understanding, recalling, and applying information. Examples include verbal (summaries, stories, analogies, acronyms) and visual (graphic organizers, diagrams, models, films) devices.

Teaching routine: A set of integrated instructional procedures which revolve around a specific teaching device that is designed to promote broad learning goals associated with the full spectrum of information acquisition, storage, and expression/demonstration of content information (Bulgren & Lenz, 1995).

Verbal device: A teaching device used in presentations where the teacher uses language to help the students learn. Examples include summaries, organizational cues, analogies, and stories.

Verbal rehearsal: The process of continually practicing a skill orally in order to master it.

Vocabulary deficits: Gaps in the number of words which one knows in comparison to peers; problems with learning new words fast enough to serve well in acquiring new information.

Web: A graphic structure that is focused on a single, central idea or concept from which all information radiates outward.

World knowledge: Labels, concepts, ideas, and facts about the world in general; general information shared by people in a given culture.

World knowledge schemata: Organized network of structures, frames, units, or scripts that include labels, concepts, ideas, and facts about the world in general and information shared by people in a given culture.