Alphabetic understanding: understanding that letters represent sounds and that whole words have a sound structure consisting of individual sounds and patterns of groups of sounds, the combination of alphabetic understanding and phonological awareness becomes the larger construct, alphabetic principle.

Conventions of print: knowledge of the semantic and visual structure of text.

Conventional literacy: reading, writing, and spelling of text in a conventional manner.

Emergent Literacy: denotes the developmental process of literacy acquisition and recognizes numerous forms of early literacy behavior.  It begins during the period before children receive formal reading instruction and encompasses learning about reading, writing, and print prior to schooling. It is acquired through informal as well as adult-directed home and school activities and facilitates acquisition of specific knowledge of reading. It includes awareness of print, relationship of print to speech, text structure, phonological awareness, and letter naming and writing. Emergent literacy differs from conventional literacy as it examines the range of settings and experiences that support literacy, the role of the child's contributions (individual construction), and the relation between individual literacy outcomes and the diverse experiences that precede those outcomes.

Functions of print: awareness of the uses of print from specific (making shopping lists, reading street signs, looking up information) to general (acquiring knowledge, conveying instructions, maintaining relationships).

Grapheme: written symbols or letters of the alphabet; arbitrary, abstract, and usually without meaning; the written equivalent of phonemes.

Onsets: the initial consonant of a word or syllable

Letter-sound correspondence: linkages between discrete phonemes and individual letters or graphemes.

Phonemes: the basic vocal gestures from which the spoken words of a language are constructed.

Phonemic Awareness: an understanding about the smallest units of sound that make up the speech stream: phonemes.

Phonics: building associations between written letters and speech phonemes

Phonological awareness:  ability to perceive spoken words as a sequence of sounds; an auditory skill which is of crucial importance to reading ability in an alphabetic system; conscious ability to detect and manipulate sound (move, combine, delete), access to sound structure of language, awareness of sounds in spoken words in contrast to written words. Phonological awareness encompasses larger units of sound, such as such as syllables, onsets, and rimes.

Purpose of print: knowledge that words convey a message separate from pictures or oral language.

Rimes: everything after the initial consonant in a one-syllable word or in syllables, traditionally referred to as phonograms or word families

Whole Language: A whole language approach represents a philosophy about reading rather than anyone instructional method. According to this philosophy, language is a natural phenomenon and literacy is promoted through natural, purposeful language function. It has as its foundation current knowledge about language development as a constructive, meaning-oriented process in which language is viewed as an authentic, natural, real-world experience, and language learning is perceived as taking place through functional reading and writing situations.