Short, plain meanings of the words you will meet when you help a young child learn to read, write and count.
Teaching reading by linking letters to the sounds they stand for, so a child can work out a new word alone.
The sound a letter stands for, such as the short sound at the start of “sun” for the letter s. Children learn letter sounds before letter names help them read.
Saying the sounds of a word one after another and joining them to hear the word: s, a, t becomes “sat”.
The opposite of blending: hearing a word and breaking it into its sounds. It is the skill a child uses to spell.
A three-sound word made of a consonant, a vowel and a consonant, such as cat, pin or hop. CVC words are the first words most children read.
The vowel sounds in cat, bed, pin, hot and sun. Beginners learn short vowels first.
Words, sentences or stories that use only the letter-sounds a child has already been taught, so every word can be sounded out.
A common word a child learns to read at once, without sounding it out each time, such as the, said or was.
A word that appears very often in books. Many high-frequency words are taught as sight words.
Two letters that stand for one sound, such as sh, ch, th and ck.
Two or three consonants said closely together where each sound can still be heard, such as st, fl or spr.
A group of words that end the same way, such as cat, hat and mat. Word families help a child read new words by pattern.
Words that end with the same sound, such as dog and log. Hearing rhymes helps a child notice the sounds inside words.
A beat in a word. “Cat” has one syllable and “rabbit” has two.
Capital letters (A, B, C) and small letters (a, b, c). Most of what a child reads is lowercase, so lowercase letters matter most at first.
Writing over dotted or gray letters and numbers. Tracing teaches the hand the shape before a child writes alone.
The small hand movements used to hold a pencil, cut with scissors and color inside a shape.
Understanding what a number means: how many it is, and how it compares with other numbers.
A grid of ten boxes, five on top and five below. Dots in the boxes help a child see a number as “five and some more”.
Seeing how many things there are at a glance, without counting one by one.
A line of numbers in order. A child can hop along it to add or subtract.
Two numbers that make another number, such as 3 and 2 making 5.
Counting in steps bigger than one, such as 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10, 20, 30.
What a digit is worth because of where it sits: in 24, the 2 means two tens and the 4 means four ones.