Alphabetic principle: The practice of using symbols or letters to represent individual speech sounds.

Anchor story: A narrative, or story, that provides a central theme, common background knowledge, and a shared context upon which subsequent instruction is based.

Coarticulate: To blend individual sounds together as they are spoken.

Cognitive strategies: Actions or methods that students can use to better understand what they are reading.

Computer Based Study Strategies: software and strategies that support students as they read to learn, take notes in class, write papers, prepare for tests, and organize for school.

Decode: In reading, to interpret unknown words by sounding out the letters.

Inspiration (Inspiration Software): A flexible program for organizing information by creating and modifying concept maps, webs and other graphical organizers, and outlines. The software makes it possible for users to instantaneously switch between diagrammatic and outline views of information without retyping or rearranging information.

Integrated learning systems (ILSs): Multi-program sets of courseware and management tools, usually covering several grade levels, and sometimes addressing multiple content areas.

K-W-L activity: a reading comprehension strategy called KWL. K stands for what you know, W stands for what you want to know, and L stands for what you want to learn.

Logograms: Pictures or symbols which correspond to words, Chinese characters for example.

Logography: Writing system in which pictures or symbols correspond to words.

Matthew effect: Describes the situation in which good readers enjoy reading, read more, and choose more difficult materials, thereby improving their skills while poor readers find reading difficult, avoid reading, and do not improve their skills.

Morpheme: A word or part of a word, not further divisible into meaningful parts.

Phonemes: Individual speech sounds, represented by letters in alphabetic writing systems.

Phonemic awareness: The ability to focus on, isolate, and manipulate individual speech sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.

Phonograms: Chunks of letters, commonly used groups of spoken sounds.

Reading comprehension: an active, purposeful process in which meaning is constructed through the interaction between reader and text (Durkin, 1993).

Relevant responding: Student responses or answers to the computer software actually practice the skill the student is supposed to be learning.

Schema: A system, a combination of elements organized in a certain way.