Background knowledge: A personal reservoir of information on a variety of topics; information retained in one's long-term memory.

Cognition: The process of knowing by thinking, comprehending, analyzing, or evaluating. Examples: Students use cognition to gain meaning from spoken or written material by reasoning, making inferences, seeing relationships, etc.

Cohesive ties: Linguistic devices that link structures within or between sentences so that relationships among ideas are clear to the reader.

Direct instruction: Instruction characterized by high rates of teacher involvement and control during the initial stages of information acquisition and careful performance monitoring as the learner gradually assumes control over application; structured, modular, and sequential instruction that emphasizes practice and mastery and provides a high level of successful experiences and positive feedback to the student.

Episode structure: That part of the story grammar comprised of the initiating event, the internal response of the main character, actions of the main character in pursuit of the goal (which may include complications in that pursuit), the consequence or result of the actions, and the resolution.

Explicit: Completely and clearly expressed without ambiguity or vagueness; fully developed. Example: Explicit text is directly stated, not implied. With explicit text, the reader does not have to "read between the lines" in order to understand what the author is saying.

Expository text: A collection of written words that gives information or explains something. Most classroom textbooks are expository - science, social studies, health, etc.

Genre: A type or kind of text. There can be broad categories, such as expository and narrative, or more specific categories, such as novels, poetry, fables, plays, etc.

Inferential questions: Questions that refer to information in the text that is not directly stated, but implied. A student would have to "read between the lines" in order to understand the meaning intended by the author.

Language connection: The process of setting up and building an association among the differing processes of language; namely, listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Macrostructure: The overall organizational pattern of a text.

Metacognition: A person's reflection on his or her own thinking processes. By using metacognitive skills, readers are able to make judgments about whether or not they understand what they are reading.

Narrative text: A collection of written words that seeks to entertain, display knowledge or skill, teach, organize, and plan behavior, most frequently involving imaginative stories with a setting, characters, and a plot. Examples of narrative writing: Little Women, A Tale of Two Cities.

Proficient readers: Individuals who effectively and independently use skills and strategies to construct meaning from print.

Pronoun antecedent: A preceding noun phrase or clause referred to by a pronoun that follows. In the example, "Mary saw Tom in the parking lot and asked him for a ride home," 'Tom' is the antecedent of 'him'.

Propositions: Ideas contained within a sentence. A simple sentence would present one idea, but as the sentence becomes more complex, several ideas, or propositions, would be presented in various independent and dependent clauses.

Protagonist: The central character in a story or drama.

Scaffolding: A way of teaching systematically in which the teacher provides to students, early in the learning process, a significant amount of support in the form of modeling, prompts, direct explanations, and targeted questions. Instruction during this phase is primarily teacher-guided. Then, as students begin to acquire mastery of the targeted objectives, direct teacher supports are reduced and the major responsibility for learning is transferred to the student. When students assume more responsibility, it is referred to as student-guided learning.

Schemata: The plural of schema; a network of many schema; the structures, frames, units, or scripts into which all knowledge is packed and organized.

Signaling device: A text structure that clues the reader to the macrostructure and relationships among specific ideas. Visual cues, such as headings, and signal words are examples of signaling devices.

Story grammar: A schema or framework for the components of a story. In Western cultures, story grammars have the following elements: setting (time, place and character introduction); plot (problem is identified); reaction of protagonist and attempts to solve the problem; and the resolution. Understanding the main character and their actions is integral to understanding the story's plot and theme.

Strategic instruction: An educational approach aimed at providing rules or guidelines to help individuals approach tasks more effectively, efficiently, and independently.

Strategy: An individual's approach to a task; how a person thinks and acts when planning, executing, and evaluating the performance of a task and its outcomes.

Text structure: Characteristics of written material; the way ideas in a text are constructed and organized. Includes overall framework or macrostructure as well as the structure of smaller segments of text related to the macrostructure (e.g., visual cues, signal words, cohesive devices, and sentence level factors).

Theme: The overall idea expressed in a literary work. This may be stated directly or may be implied. The theme is not to be confused with the moral, or lesson, but rather is an exploration of important ideas in human life.

Visual depiction: Graphic structures used to organize information in a manner that makes the information easier to connect, learn, and remember.

World knowledge: Labels, concepts, ideas, and facts about the world in general; general information shared by people in a given culture.