I don’t know sign language or speak a foreign language or anything like that, but I know what it feels like to be a translator. Because at parent teacher conferences, my daughter’s teachers inevitably assume that since I’m an educator they can let the fancy-pants jargon fly. Which works for me, I can keep up. Unfortunately, there’s another parent at the table, and he doesn’t speak teacher-ese.

It kind of goes like this: The teacher tells us something, I run it through the filter to bring it down to civilian language, and tell my ex. He then either understands or doesn’t.  If he gets it and has no questions, cool and the gang. If he doesn’t, it gets confusing, because instead of asking the teacher, he askes me, and then I’m stuck in a little place I like to call translation limbo.

Well, it’s parent teacher conference time again, and to celebrate I’m going to do a word of the week montage on basic reading terms you’ve probably heard from your child's teacher. Feel free to print this out and bring it with you. I’ll waive copyright laws in the name of a common good.

Phonemes are the smallest parts of spoken language. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate these sounds. Phonics is an understanding of the relationship between the sounds of spoken language and the written language. More information and the typical progressional development in children can be found here.

Sight words are words a child can read without sounding out. Usually they’re referred to as Dolsch, after Dr. Dolsch, a researcher and the founder of this list of 220 commonly used words.

A word wall is a systematically organized collection of words alphabetically displayed in large letters on a wall in the classroom. Students use the word wall to promote vocabulary, aid in writing, and to notice similar phonetic and spelling patterns. Click here for more information on word walls.

No, I’m not printing this out for my ex. I’ll just forward him the link instead.

By Sharon Linde, Education Blogger for SmartParenting