| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Accuracy | Correctness or precision. |
| Affix | To add a prefix or suffix to a word. |
| Alliteration | Words that repeat beginning consonant sounds (Ted tiptoed toward two tiny trees.) |
| Allusion | An implied reference in writing to a familiar person, place or event without actually mentioning them. |
| Analysis | The process of identifying the parts of a whole idea and their relationships to one another. |
| Antonym | A word that is the opposite of another word (e.g. hot-cold, night-day). |
| Appositive | Writing where two nouns in a row refer to the same person (ex- " My father, Ned, worked for NASA."). |
| Assertion | A statement or claim. |
| Purpose | What the author is trying to do by writing (ex - entertain, inform, persuade, describe). |
| Autobiography | The story of a person's life written by himself or herself. |
| Biography | The story of a person's life written by someone else. |
| Cause and Effect | The reason something happens and the result of it happening. |
| Characterization | The way an author describes characters to show what they are like. |
| Compound Word | A word composed of two or more smaller words (ex - doorknob) |
| Conclusion | The ending of the story. |
| Conflict/Problem | A struggle between opposing characters or forces in a story; the plot is usually about getting a resolution to it. |
| Context Clues | Information from the reading that hints at a word's meaning. |
| Contrast | To compare or find differences. |
| Conventions of Language | Rules for proper writing. |
| Descriptive Text | Writing that allows a reader to picture the scene or setting in which the action of a story takes place. |
| Dialogue | Conversation between people in a story. |
| Differentiate | Distinguish, tell apart and recognize differences between two or more items. |
| Editorial | A newspaper or magazine article that gives the opinions of the editors or publishers. |
| Epic | A long story-like poem about the adventures of a hero. |
| Evaluate | To examine and to judge carefully. |
| Exaggeration | To make an overstatement or to stretch the truth. |
| Explanatory Sentence | A sentence that explains something. |
| Explicit | Something actually stated or written out; the opposite of implicit |
| Expository Text | Text written to explain and give information about a topic. |
| Fable | A story intended to teach a moral lesson. Animals with human characteristics often serve as characters. |
| Fairy Tale | Short stories featuring mythical beings such as fairies, elves and sprites. |
| Fiction | Any story that is the product of imagination, even if the story is possible or realistic. |
| Figurative Language | Language that cannot be taken literally. (ex - "You're pulling my leg, right?") |
| First Person | When the narrator of the story uses "I" to describe events. (ex - "I went down my back steps and there, in front of me, was the thing that terrified me.") |
| Flashback | A way of writing that looks back on an event that happened before the time of writing; often written as if from the memory of a character. |
| Fluency | The level of a reader's ability to read clearly, without un-needed pauses. |
| Focus | The center of interest or attention. |
| Folktales | A fairy-tale type story coming from spoken tradition. |
| Foreshadowing | Hinting at future events without actually telling them. |
| Free Verse | Poetry without regular meter and rhyme patterns. |
| Generalization | A conclusion formed from specific information, used to make a broad statement about a topic or person. |
| Genre | A category used to classify writing, usually by form or content (ex - action, mystery, romance, poetry). |
| Graphic Organizer | A diagram or picture device that shows relationships. |
| Homophone | Words pronounced the same, but have a different spelling or meaning (ex -"write" and "right") |
| Hyperbole | An exaggeration or overstatement (ex- I was so embarrassed I could have died.). |
| Idiom | An expression that cannot be understood if taken literally (ex- "Get your head out of the clouds"). |
| Imagery | A word or group of words in a writing which speak to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. |
| Implicit | Meanings which, though unwritten in the actual text, may be understood by the reader. |
| Inference | A judgment based on reasoning rather than on direct or actual statement. A conclusion based on facts or circumstances. |
| Irony | The use of a word or phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or usual meaning, often sarcastically. |
| Legends | A story about mythical or supernatural creatures or events, or a story coming down from the past. |
| Limerick | A five line poem in which lines 1, 2 and 5 rhyme and lines 3 and 4 rhyme. |
| Limited view | In a story, the narrator is usually one of the characters and only knows what is going on in his own mind, not in other characters' minds. |
| Literary Elements | The techniques used in writing (ex- characterization, setting, plot, theme). |
| Literary Nonfiction | Factual writing that uses techniques more often used with fiction or stories. |
| Main Idea | The author's central thought or chief topic. |
| Metaphor | Writing that compares or describes without using 'like' or 'as'. (ex. - the man is a bulldozer; nothing can move him.) |
| Meter | The repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. |
| Mood | The 'emotions' of a work or of the author in his or her creation of the work. |
| Narrative | Writing which tells a story or relates events or dialogue |
| Nonfiction | Writing that is factual, not creative or fictional. |
| Omniscient | Form of writing where the author is "all-knowing" and can share each character's thoughts or past. |
| Onomatopoeia | The use of words whose sounds express or suggest their meaning. (ex. - "hiss" or "meow".) |
| Paraphrase | Restate text or passage in other words, often to clarify meaning or show understanding. |
| Personification | Something non-human which is given human qualities or human form (ex. Flowers danced about the lawn.). |
| Phonics | The relationship between letters and sounds fundamental in beginning reading. |
| Plot | The sequence in which the author arranges events in a story. The structure often includes the rising action, the climax, the falling action and the resolution. |
| Poetry | Writing that aims to present ideas and evoke an emotional experience in the reader through the use of meter, imagery, and sometimes, rhyme. |
| Point of view | The vantage point from which the story is told. |
| Possessive | A form of a noun or pronoun that indicates belonging to someone or something. (usually apostrophe and s. Michael's boat. |
| Prefix | A Prefixes are groups of letters that can be placed before a word to alter its meaning. |
| Print Media | Includes such forms as newspapers, periodicals, magazines, books, newsletters, advertising, memos, business forms, etc. |
| Problem/Solution | An organizational structure in nonfiction texts, where the author typically presents a problem and possible solutions to it. |
| Propaganda Techniques | Unfounded or illogical ways of getting someone to agree with your point of view. |
| Public document | A document that focuses on civic issues or matters of public policy. |
| Reading critically | Reading in which a questioning attitude, logical analysis and inference are used to judge the worth of text. |
| Reading rate | The speed at which a person reads, usually silently. |
| Research | A systematic study of a subject or problem. |
| Resolution | The part of a story following the climax, in which the story's main conflict is resolved. |
| Retell | Recounting in your own words a story or article that has just been read. |
| Rhyme | Identical or very similar recurring final sounds in words usually at the end of lines of a poem. |
| Rhythm | The pattern or beat of a poem. |
| Rising Action | The part of a story where the plot becomes increasingly complicated, leading up to the climax. |
| Root Word | A root word is one to which prefixes and suffixes can be added (example: HELP - helpful, unhelpful, helpless, helper) |
| Satire | The use of ridicule, sarcasm, or irony in writing to make fun of someone or something. |
| Self-monitor | A comprehension strategy; knowing or recognizing when what one is reading or writing is not making sense. |
| Semantics | The study of meaning in language. |
| Setting | The time and place in which a story unfolds. |
| Simile | A comparison of two unlike things in which a word of comparison (like or as) is used (e.g., She eats like a bird.). |
| Sonnet | A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose rhyme scheme is usually abbaabba cdecde. |
| Primary Source | Text and/or artifacts that tell a first-hand account or are original works (letters, journals, etc.) |
| Secondary Source | Text and/or artifacts that are not original, but written from something original (biographies, magazine articles, research papers). |
| Story Maps | A visual representation of a story that provides an overview including characters, setting, the problem, and resolution or ending. |
| Subject area | An organized body of knowledge; a discipline; a content area. |
| Suffix | Suffixes are groups of letters placed after a word that change its meaning or part of speech. |
| Summarize | To capture all the most important parts of the original story, but express them in a much shorter space, and in the readers own words. |
| Style | How an author writes; an author's use of language |
| Symbolism | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. |
| Synonym | One of two or more words in a language that have highly similar meanings (e.g., sorrow, grief, sadness). |
| Syntax | The pattern or structure of word order in sentences, clauses and phrases. |
| Text Structure | The author's method of organizing a text. |
| Theme | A topic of discussion or writing; a major idea broad enough to cover the entire scope of a literary work. |
| Thesis | The basic argument advanced by a speaker or writer |
| Third Person | A perspective that presents the events of the story from outside of any single character's perception |
| Tone | The attitude of the author toward the audience and characters (e.g., serious or humorous). |
| Validity | Refers to statements that have the appearance of truth or reality. |
| Venn Diagrams | Idea map made up of two or more overlapping circles. |
| Voice | The fluency, rhythm and liveliness in writing that make it unique to the writer. |
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