A Science of Reading glossary for parents

October 22, 2026By The DecodiVerse Team
science-of-readingglossaryphonicsdecodable-booksparents

Teaching a five-year-old to read comes with surprisingly grown-up jargon. This glossary is for parents who keep meeting these words in school emails, report cards and the news. The eight terms run in the order a child meets the ideas. Each starts with a definition that stands on its own, then adds a K-2 example, a look-alike term and links to longer posts.

Science of Reading

The Science of Reading is a body of research, drawn from many fields such as cognitive psychology, linguistics and education, on how children learn to read and why some struggle. Because it's a body of research, it isn't a single program or product. It isn't only phonics either: the research also covers vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Example: In a kindergarten classroom, the research shows up as teaching letter sounds directly, in a planned order, and practicing them in short texts, alongside reading aloud and talking about books to build vocabulary and understanding.

Often confused with: phonics. Phonics is one strand of the research, not all of it.

See also: What are decodable books?

Phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and work with the single sounds, called phonemes, in spoken words. It happens by ear, with no letters involved. It is one part of phonological awareness, the wider skill of noticing the sound parts of speech, such as syllables and rhymes.

Example: A teacher says "sit" and the child splits it into /s/ /ĭ/ /t/. Or the teacher says /s/ /ĭ/ /t/ and the child blends the sounds into "sit". (Slashes mark sounds, so /s/ is the hiss, not the letter name "ess".) The skill itself is about sounds, but the National Reading Panel found that phonemic awareness teaching worked best when it included working with sounds using letters.

Often confused with: phonics, which links sounds to letters. Spelling matters here: this skill is "phonemic", and "phonetic" is a different word.

See also: Reading screeners explained for parents

Phonics

Phonics is how letters and letter groups stand for the sounds in spoken words, and the teaching of those connections. Systematic phonics teaches them in a planned sequence, rather than pointing them out as they happen to come up in whatever a child reads.

Example: Ship has four letters but three sounds, /sh/ /ĭ/ /p/, because s and h together stand for one sound. In DecodiVerse, that pattern is a focus of Kindergarten Step 4, "Two letters, one sound," with words like duck and back, where c and k together stand for one sound, /k/. The National Reading Panel found that systematic phonics was significantly more effective than teaching with little or no phonics.

Often confused with: phonemic awareness, which works with sounds alone, with no letters.

See also: How to choose the right reading level

Decoding and blending

Decoding is working out a written word by turning its letters into sounds and joining the sounds into a word. Blending is the joining step: a child who says /m/ /ă/ /p/ and then slides the sounds together to say "map" has decoded the word.

Example: In Kindergarten Step 1, "Short-vowel words" (cat, map, sit), a child touches each letter, says /m/ /ă/ /p/, then reads "map" smoothly. Each time a child sounds out a word correctly, its letters and sounds link up more firmly in memory. After enough correct readings, the child reads the word instantly, without sounding it out. Researchers call this orthographic mapping.

Often confused with: reading comprehension. Decoding gets the words off the page. Understanding them also depends on knowing word meanings and spoken language.

See also: What to do when your child gets stuck on a word and Why your child guesses at words

Decodable text

Decodable text is writing made mostly of words a child can sound out with the letter-sound patterns taught so far, plus a few tricky words the child has been taught. It is matched to what a child has learned, so sounding out works.

How others define it: The 2016 IES practice guide describes it as text written so students can read it using the letter sounds and high-frequency words they have learned. Researchers define it in different ways, literacy researcher Timothy Shanahan notes: some set a percentage of decodable words, others go by what the child has been taught.

Example: In Kindergarten Step 2, "All the letter sounds and first blends" (stop, skip, lamp), the sentence "Stan can skip and stop at the lamp" has seven words a child can sound out with the patterns taught through Step 2 and one tricky word, the.

Often confused with: leveled readers.

See also: What are decodable books? and Decodable books vs. leveled readers

Heart words (tricky words)

Heart words (we call them tricky words; some programs say red words or trick words) are common words with a part that doesn't follow the usual letter-sound patterns, or that uses a pattern the child hasn't been taught yet. Some are tricky for good, others only until a pattern is taught.

In the word lists we use, said and was stay heart words for good; he is a heart word only until children learn that a vowel at the end of a syllable can say its name. Children learn a heart word through its sounds, like any other word: say it, match each sound to its letters, and mark the part that doesn't match with a heart. That part is the one to learn by heart.

Example: In said, the s and d are regular: /s/ and /d/. The ai is the tricky part, because here it says /ĕ/. Only that part needs extra help.

Where guidance differs: The 2016 IES practice guide recommends teaching irregular high-frequency words as whole words. Others, including literacy researcher Timothy Shanahan, recommend introducing them through their sounds and letters, the approach described here.

Often confused with: sight words, a phrase with two meanings. Some people use it for high-frequency words on a list, such as the Dolch or Fry lists. Literacy researcher Timothy Shanahan uses it for any word a reader recognizes instantly, however it was learned. Many heart words are on those high-frequency lists, and once learned, a heart word becomes a sight word in the second sense too. But a sight word needn't be tricky: any well-practiced word, like cat, becomes one, and most high-frequency words taught in kindergarten through third grade are decodable, Reading Universe notes.

See also: What to do when your child gets stuck on a word and What are decodable books?

Fluency

Fluency is reading text accurately, at a natural pace and with expression, so it sounds like talking. It rests on automaticity: recognizing words quickly and without effort, which leaves attention free for meaning. Speed alone is not fluency, and racing through a page while missing words is not reading well.

Example: A child who sounds out each word of "Stan can skip and stop at the lamp" is still decoding. When the child reads it smoothly the first time through, pausing at the period, the words are becoming automatic. Rereading a familiar story aloud, with an adult giving feedback, is one way the IES practice guide recommends to build that.

Often confused with: reading fast. Some school screeners, such as DIBELS, include a one-minute reading that counts the words read correctly (see our screeners guide). It measures accuracy and pace together, but not expression.

See also: What are decodable books?

Three-cueing

Three-cueing is an approach in which a child identifies an unfamiliar word from three kinds of clues: the meaning of the sentence or picture, the sentence structure, and the look of the letters. It was a popular way to teach reading for decades, Stateline reported in 2025.

The House bill (H.R. 7890) says it is commonly referred to as MSV, for meaning, structure and syntax, and visual cues.

Example: The text says horse, the picture shows a horse, and a child says "pony." Three-cueing would note that the child used meaning and sentence structure but not the letters. A decoding approach sends the child back to the letters: /h/ /or/ /s/, horse.

Why it's in the news: Lawmakers in several states have passed laws restricting it, and in September 2026 the U.S. House passed a bill that would bar it from instruction paid for by a federal literacy grant program. As of October 2026, the bill had not become law.

What researchers say: The IES foundational-skills practice guide doesn't use the label, but its panel advises teachers to discourage guessing unknown words from beginning letters or pictures.

Often confused with: using context to understand a text. Context helps a child understand a word once it's read. Three-cueing uses context and pictures, along with a glance at the letters, to work out which word it is.

See also: Why your child guesses at words instead of sounding them out

Next step

To see decodable text in a whole story, read a free sample. There is one for each of our 13 skill steps, from Kindergarten to Grade 2.

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