Glossary of Terms

Grapheme

The written representation of a sound.

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound in a word.

Digraph

Two letters representing one phoneme (sound), e.g. train, ship, hurt.

Trigraph

Three letters representing a sound, e.g. light, bridge

Vowel

A phoneme produced without audible closure.

Short Vowels

a e i o u

Long Vowels

These sound like the letter names A E I O U.
Common ways to write these are:

ai, ay, ee, ea, ie, igh, oa, ow, oo, ue, ew

and the split digraph or 'magic e' as in cake, bike, nose, tune.

Consonants

A sound which is produced by using lips, tongue and teeth to cause some friction. The following letters are consonants:

b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x y z

The letter 'y' can act as a consonant or vowel.

Consonant digraphs

Two letters representing a consonant sound, e.g. ch, sh, th

Vowel digraphs

As well as the long vowel digraphs above, other vowel digraphs are:

ar, ou, ow, ur, ir, er, oi, oy, or, au, aw.

Vowel trigraphs

These include air, are, ear.

Segmenting

To break a word down into its phonemes, e.g c-a-t, sh-i-p, n-ee-d,

Blending

The process of combining phonemes together in the order in which they appear in a word from left to right. i.e synthesizing.

High Frequency Words

These are the words used most often in written English. These include:

the and to of a in on I is it for are

Decode:

The process of looking at a word and breaking it down into its phonemes.

Encode

The process of writing down the phonemes heard in a word, i.e. spelling.

Decodable text

Written text that children can decode using the phonic skills they have been taught.

Rose Review

This is the independent review of the teaching of reading in primary schools commissioned by the government in June 2005 and led by Jim Rose. The final report was published on 20th March 2006. Its recommendations have been incorporated in the renewed Primary Framework for Literacy.