Basic Terms
Words arranged so that the same starting sound is repeated in speech, often for musicality, memorability, or dramatic effect.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
“Silent seas shimmer softly.”
“Big brown bear.”
Alliterative Spoken Words
A syllable that ends with a vowel, and the vowel usually makes its long sound
Open Syllable
When the letters “c” or “g” are followed by the letters “i,” “y,” or “e” they make their other (soft) sound (e.g., “city,” “cent,” and “fancy” vs. “can,” “cup,” and “coat” as well as “gym,” “gel,” and “giant” vs. “goal,” “gain,” and “gum”);
circle vs cartwheel
cycle vs climb
germ vs game
When “c” and “g” make their other sound
Common words that a reader can recognize instantly without sounding it out.
Sight Words
Two or more letters that make a vowel sound
peach
boat
point
lien
boot
trout
Vowel Teams
Consecutive consonants that keep their individual sounds when put together
tr-/t/ /r/
fl-/f/ /l/
br-/b/ /r/
Consonant Blends
Words that end in final “f,” “l,” “s,” and
sometimes “z” that follow an accented short vowel or are in a one-syllable word are doubled.
fizz
staff
fall
Final Doubled Consonant Pattern
Words that end in final “f,” “l,” “s,” and
sometimes “z” that follow an accented short vowel or are in a one-syllable word are doubled.
Final Doubled Consonant Pattern
Three letters that work together to make one sound.
Trigraph
Two or more letters that make a vowel sound (e.g. ue, oo, ie, ea)
-oa- soap, road, toad
-ou- sound like /ou/ in “cloud”
includes consonants like “w” in lawn and the “y” in hay
Variable Vowel Teams
A single sound that is represented by two letters; neither letter acts alone to represent the sound (e.g., th, sh, ch, wh, ph, ng (“sing”) gh (“cough”)).
Digrah
Words ending in -le. This final syllable is unstressed when vocalized (e.g., candle, juggle)
Consonant-le Syllable
When adding the morphemes “-ed” or “-ing” to the end of a root word, the final consonant is doubled in words with one vowel and one final consonant. For example, the word “stop” has one short vowel “o” and one final consonant “p”. Therefore, the final consonant (“p”) is doubled before adding either “-ed” (as in “stopped”) or “-ing” (as in “stopping”); and
mop- mopping
tap- tapped
step- stepping
Doubling Pattern
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A single vowel sound that glides from one vowel to another within the same syllable.
/ou/ as in go
/oi/ as in boy
/ai/ as in sky
Vowel Diphthong
A vowel sound that can be heard in an unstressed syllable and is often heard as the short /i/ as in bit or the short /u/ as in cup (e.g., parrot, above).
Schwa
A vowel that is followed by the letter "r" and creates distinct
sounds like ar, er, ir, or, and ur (e.g., star, corner).
Vowel -r syllable
Graphemes only appear in certain positions of words (e.g., in English, words do not start with “ck”).
There are four ways to spell the phoneme /k/ (“k,” “c,” “-ck,” and “ch”). The letters “ck” are only used at the end of a word or syllable immediately after an accented short vowel.
sock
lock
duck
-ck Pattern
Words that show up with a high percentage rate in written text
High-Frequency Words
Suffixes added to words to indicate grammatical information without changing the words meaning s, es, ed, ing, en, er and est
cat (s) cats
dish (es) dishes
dog (s) dogs
Inflectional Morpheme
The act of sounding out a word using knowledge from graphemes
Asyllable pattern where a vowel is followed by one consonant and a silent e at the end. The silent e is not pronounced, but it makes the first vowel say its long sound (its name).
hope
Without e -hop (short o sound)
With silent e -hope (long o sound)
Vowel Consonant -e Syllable
“In words that end in a silent “e,” the “e” is dropped before adding
the suffix. (e.g., “hope” to “hoping)
The “e” is kept if it is needed for the final consonant to retain its sound (e.g., “encourage” to “encouragement”) .
Drop the e Pattern
The act of scribing a word from speech to print
Encoding
a word part (prefix or suffix) that is added to a base word to change its meaning or the type of word.
teach-> -er (add -er to change the word to a noun)
happy-> -un (add un- changes the meaning)
care-> less ( add -less to change the meaning
Derivational Morpheme