ABC's of Literacy

Alliteration - the repetition of sounds, especially initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words

Basal Reader- controlled vocabulary textbooks.

Colloquial - the use of slang or informalities in speech or writing

Diction - referring to style, diction refers to the writer's word choices, especially with regard to their correctness, clearness, or effectiveness

Euphemism - from the Greek for "good speech," a more agreeable or less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word or concept

Figurative language - writing or speech that is not intended to carry literary meaning and is usually meant to be imaginative and vivid

Genre - the major category into which a literary work fits (eg prose, poetry, and drama).

Homily - literally "sermon", or any serious talk, speech, or lecture providing moral or spiritual advice.

Imagery - the sensory details or figurative language used to describe, arouse emotion, or represent abstractions.

Jargon- the language, especially the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group.

KWL Strategy- gets children involved in completing a chart with three columns.  Children organize, integrate, and summarize the information they have acquired from the text.

Loose sentence - a type of sentence in which the main idea comes first, followed by dependent grammatical units.

Metaphor - a figure of speech using implied comparison of seemingly unlike things or the substitution of one for the other, suggesting some similarity.

Narrative - the telling of a story or an account of an event or sereis of events.

Onomatopoeia - natural sounds are imitated in the sounds of words (eg buzz, hiss).

Personification - a figure of speech in which the author presents or describes concepts, animas or inanimate objects by endowing them with human attributes or emotions.

Questioning Strategies- making an effort to get kids to talk to you by asking them open ended questions.

Rhetoric - from the Greek for "orator," the principles governing the art of writing effectively, eloquently, and persuasively.

Semantics - the branch of linguistics which studies the meaning of words, their historical and psychological development (etymology), their connotations, and their relation to one another.

Theme - the central idea or message of a work, the insight it offers into life.

Understatement - the ironic minimalizing of facts, presents something as less significant than it is.

Vocabulary- the words we must know in order to communicate effectively. 

Wit - intellectually amusing language that surprises and delights.

X-

Zone of Proximal Development- the gap between what the children can do independently and what the child cannot do.