Alphabetic Principle
A writing system designed to associate major speech sounds (phonemes) with a limited set of alphabet letters.

Analytic Phonics
A whole-to-part approach to word study in which the student is first taught a number of sight words and then breaks them into discreet phonics elements.

Balanced Approach
An approach to reading instruction that incorporates teaching skills, such as, phonics and the use of a wide variety of children's literature.

Blending (auditory)
Combining separate phonemes or speech sounds and pronouncing them as whole words (e.g., /t/ /o/ /p/ = top).

Consonant Blends
Two or more consonants pronounced smoothly together, each making a separate sound (e.g., fl, st, scr).

Consonant Digraphs
Two consonants combined to represent one sound (e.g., sh, ck, th, ch).

Consonants
Consonants are all letters excluding vowels (a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes y).

Cueing Systems
Three major systems for decoding printed sentences: syntactic system, semantic system, graphophonemic system.