The ability to communicate in ways beyond the traditional modes of reading and writing, including in music, dance, visual art, drama, and digital technology.

A method of reading instruction which develops the reader’s sight vocabulary, linguistic proficiency, and graphophonic awareness as they read their language. The teacher examines the stories students have written down and uses some of their experiences to help them expand on their words through discussion and questions.

A reading strategy which aims to help students relate their personal experiences to the main events in a story through various stages: discuss experiences (experience step), read the text (text step), and connect the experiences to the story (relationship step).

The ability to effectively engage in and employ the formal style of language used in the school setting.

The aptitude for certain forms of social interaction including conversational language.

A variation of standard English dialect, which has its system of phonological patterns and rules and is spoken by the people of many African American communities.

The act of deriving a generalization from the specific process involved in recognizing certain unfamiliar words and applying it to other unknown words.

Relating to the active exchange of ideas between reader and text or speaker and listener to create meaning.

A lesson plan that a teacher determines, after collecting and analyzing educational data, is the most beneficial to a particular student’s learning needs.

A tool for differentiating the learning processes of different learners to achieve common goals in a lesson.