Remember Liza? If you read that previous Liza post, you met that preschooler when she was at the earliest stage of learning to read—the Pre-Alphabetic stage.

She knew a few letters but no letter sounds, so reading was primarily a visual matching task for her. If she remembered any words, it was usually through partial visual cues, such as associating the word look with two eyes in the middle.

Now we will see how Liza moved on to the next stage. As she began to learn a few letter sounds she progressed into the Partial-Alphabetic phase. Although not able to completely sound out unfamiliar words, she could sometimes use partial phonetic cues, along with language pattern and illustrations, to guess words.

READING STAGES

As you may recall from my previous post, young children progress through different stages as they learn to read. These stages overlap, so they are often called phases. By adjusting our teaching to the stage the youngster is on, we can help them move smoothly through that phase and onto the next one.

Linnea Ehri spent her career researching the stages that children go through when learning to read:

• • Pre-Alphabetic: Children know few if any letter-sound correspondences and are not ready to analyze words phonetically. They rely on learning words as wholes and guessing from partial visual cues and context. (PreK-K)
  • Partial-Alphabetic: Readers know some letter-sound correspondences, but can’t decode whole words. They might use partial phonetic cues—often 1^st or last letters—along with the context—to figure out words. (K-1)
  • Full-Alphabetic: Youngsters use a full decoding strategy to identify unfamiliar words—either phoneme by phoneme, or by analogy. (1-2)
  • Consolidated-Alphabetic: Students are more skilled at decoding and can recognize larger chunks—morphemes or syllables. (2-3+)

 

For years, I have been using Dr. Ehri’s research conclusions to shape my teaching, and I’ve observed that many, if not most, of my students have passed through the stages she describes.

THE PARTIAL-ALPHABETIC PHASE

For a parent or teacher, watching a child move into the Partial-Alphabetic stage can be quite exciting. After all, the youngster is making a new discovery—that written language is phonological, that letters in words can be matched to sounds.

However, this phase is only partially alphabetic. The child has not mastered all the grapheme-phoneme correspondences and is not yet adept at blending or segmenting sounds when reading or spelling new words. Instead, readers in the Partial-Alphabetic stage are using a strategy that Dr. Ehri calls the prediction strategy. Because their decoding ability is only partial, they continue to depend on context and picture cues, as well as isolated phonetic cues. In other words, these children are still guessing.

Instead of the visual cue reading they used in the Pre-Alphabetic stage, they are now employing phonetic cue reading. Generally, the first phonetic cues these students notice are initial and (later) final consonants.

You will also notice partial-alphabetic features in the invented spellings of these children. Unable to segment all the sounds in a word, and unfamiliar with all the letters that represent the sounds, their spelling attempts often consist of dominant consonant sounds, usually initial and final consonant (e.g., NM for /name/).

The length of time children spend at this stage varies greatly. Some kids go through the phase quickly or even skip the stage all together. Others take a long time. A few disabled readers, such as my student Liza, never even progress beyond the partial-alphabetic stage to full decoding. For whatever reason, they can’t decode words fully and are stuck using context cues, illustrations, and isolated phonetic cues to identify unknown words.

USE READING STAGES TO HELP READERS MAXIMIZE THEIR LEARNING

Wonderfully, there are three ways we can adjust our teaching to the reading phase a child is moving through:

1. Introduce words most easily learned at that phase.

2. Teach strategies for learning at that stage.

3. Nudge the students toward the next phase.

HELPING PARTIAL-ALPHABETIC READERS

1. Introduce words most easily learned at the Partial-Alphabetic stage.

We always want to help the reader build up their sight vocabulary so they can read smoothly and anchor on known words as they negotiate a text. As students move into the Partial-Alphabetic stage, keep choosing texts that contain lots of high frequency words.

But you may notice that the type of high frequency words the children at this stage remember is gradually changing. In the Pre-Alphabetic stage, they most easily retained imageable or visually distinctive words. Now they may more easily learn words that are phonetic (e.g., it, mom, can), while nonphonetic words (e.g., of, was) elude them. I include in the nonphonetic category words that contain grapheme-phoneme connections the children haven’t learned yet (e.g., that, how).   If you haven’t already begun to include phonetic words in your list of high frequency sight words, begin to do so now.

As you teach phonics, you will also be including low frequency words (e.g., fan, tan, pan) in phonetic decoding exercises. (See Section. 3) Naturally if your school system has a fixed curriculum, you have to follow that. But, if you are able to design your phonics lessons, start with works best for your students (for example, VC words or CVC words).

When you compose words for phonics work, start with initial consonants whose sounds can be easily extended (m, s, f, r, n) to make them easier for the child to hear. Then follow with other consonants that are easily associated with their letter names (b, d, j, k, l, p, t, v, z; soft c, soft g), not v, w, or y. Expect a lot of review for vowel sounds.

2. Teach strategies for learning at the Partial-Alphabetic stage.

At the Partial-Alphabetic stage, you want to capitalize on the child’s newfound awareness that letters “have” sounds, and vice versa, keeping in mind that their knowledge is only partial at this point.

Introduce phonemic awareness activities that encourage awareness of initial (final) spoken sounds.

• • Tell whether two spoken words begin (end) the same.
  • Identify the letter that spoken words begin (end) with.
  • Sort images by initial (final) sounds.
  • Match images to initial (final) sound.

Focus on activities that develop knowledge of letter-sound correspondences and identifying initial and final sounds in written words.

• • Using alphabet chart, with key word images.
  • Reading homemade alphabet book, with key word images.
  • Group and examine known, and later unknown, words that begin (end) the same (e.g., in, is, it; be, boy, big). These can be high frequency words from books, or words that include letters you have introduced.

Draw attention to the first letter in reading.

• • Have student use first letter to locate word in new book before and after reading.
  • Don’t expect complete decoding yet.
  • These children are apt to confuse words that begin or end the same, so don’t introduce such words at the same time (e.g., look, like; book, black).
  • Choose books that are slightly less predictable.

Encourage self-monitoring with first (and last) letter while reading connected texts. Up until now, if the child has been self-monitoring at all, it has been with whole known words. Now praise the child’s use of partial phonetic cues to guess at unfamiliar words.

• • Draw attention to the first letter in reading.
  • The child might self-correct their first letter error, indicating that they attended to the first letter:

Student:  I see a dog|SC/ puppy.

Teacher: Good! You noticed something. What did you notice?   (Hopefully the child will say something that indicates that they realize it can’t be dog because the word doesn’t begin with D, or that it has to be puppy because puppy begins with P.  This confirms that they are paying attention to the first letter.)

• • Or maybe the child makes a first letter error, and you want to call their attention to the first letter.

Student: We went to the school/building.

Teacher: You said We went to the school. Is that right? Why not?

Encourage use of first letter in writing/spelling.

• • In interactive writing, have student write first letter, and you write the rest of the word.
  • Practice letter formation, while saying the sound of the letter.
  • Praise invented spelling with appropriate initial and final letters. Then show them the conventional spelling for the word.

3. Nudge the students toward the Full-Alphabetic stage.

The next phase after the Partial-Alphabetic stage is the Full-Alphabetic stage, when children can fully decode words either phoneme by phoneme (synthetic phonics) or through comparison with a known word (analogy-based phonics). Because students’ known words are not strong early on, Dr. Ehri recommends starting with synthetic phonics.

To nudge a student toward being able to decode phonetically, you need to provide two missing links: grapheme-phoneme correspondences and blending.

Continue teaching letter-sound relationships appropriate for the child’s grade level, or whatever the child can retain. It’s ideal if the youngster can use this new knowledge while reading or writing connected text, not just in isolation.

You also want to show the child how to blend sounds for reading and segment sounds for spelling. Keep in mind that these youngsters won’t be able to remember spellings until they are more aware of how words are put together phonologically.

To fill in those missing links and help the student progress to the Full-Alphabetic stage:

• Teach phonemic awareness: Practice blending 2-4 sounds to read words.
• Teach phonemic awareness: Practice segmenting 2-4 sounds to spell words.
• Expand letter-sound knowledge (harder consonants; consonant combinations; vowels).
• Include phonetic high frequency words in your sight word supply.
• Introduce phonetic rare words for decoding activities (e.g., sit, sip, sick). For some children, these may have to be short words (e.g., if, it, in). See Section 1.
• Spend more time on vowels and other medial sounds.
• Begin pointing out the differences in similarly spelled words (e.g., start, smart).
• Read books that are less predictable.
• Use Elkonin boxes in spelling.

Remember that children learn decoding at different rates, and some might stay in the Partial stage longer than others. Maybe they have difficulty remembering letter-sound correspondences or trouble blending sounds. Just take students from where they are now to the next step, whatever it is. If the child is focusing on first letter, then show them last letter. If they can attend to first and last letters, direct them to the medial vowel sound (the most challenging). If the youngster can’t blend sounds at all, start with two letters. And so forth, one step at a time.

Enjoy watching your readers begin to use phonological cues, as they progress from the Pre-Alphabetic stage to the Partial-Alphabetic phase, and hopefully onward to reading in a fully alphabetic manner. Happy teaching!

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References

Ehri, Linnea C. 2015. How children learn to read words. In Oxford Library of Psychology: The Oxford Handbook of Reading (Alexander Pollatsek and Rebecca Treiman, eds.), pp. 293-310. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved on 11/28/2019 from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-46178-020.

Ehri, Linnea C. 2014. Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading 18: 5-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2013.819356.

Ehri, Linnea C. 2005. Development of sight word reading: Phases and findings. In The Science of Reading: A Handbook (Margaret J. Snowling, Charles Hulme, eds.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470757642.ch8.

Ehri, Linnea C. and Sandra McCormick. 1998. Phases of word learning: implications for instruction with delayed and disabled readers. Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties 14(2): 135-163.