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You are here: Home / 5 Stages of Literacy Development / Reading and Spelling Development / Stage 2: Now I Know My ABC’s (roughly 5-7 years old)

Stage 2: Now I Know My ABC’s (roughly 5-7 years old)

Reader Behaviors    

Beginning:

  • move from pretend reading to real reading
  • may say, “I can’t read” as they realize they do not know all the words in a book
  • use mostly pictures and initial consonants to help them figure out unknown words (context clues)
  • may guess at unknown words, even if it doesn’t make sense
  • reading of texts sounds very laborious (word-by-word)
  • begin to recognize words by sight
  • “silent” reading=whisper reading as they vocalize words
  • comprehension may be difficult from the first reading of a text, as readers are very focused on reading the words correctly
  • finger points to words when reading
  • rhyming becomes more consistent and readers are able to “play” with sounds in words better

Middle:

  • begin to try and sound out unknown words
  • rely on pictures, initial consonants, and length of words to help them figure out unknown words (context clues)
  • “silent” reading=whisper reading as they vocalize words
  • reading out loud is still word-by-word
  • still may guess at unknown words, but begins to realize that their guesses need to make sense
  • comprehension may be difficult from the first reading of a text, as readers are very focused on reading the words correctly
  • finger point to words when reading

End:

  • try to sound out many unknown words
  • when sounding out doesn’t work, context clues are used to help with unknown words
  •  “silent” reading=whisper reading as they vocalize words
  • will still finger point from time to time, but may start to move away from it
  • develop more of an awareness that text should make sense; begins to self-correct more when an error is made
  • may start to look for known words within other words (chunking)

(WTW 3rd ed, 22-23  & Reading Development

 

Spelling Behaviors

Beginning:

  • match the written letters in words to letter sounds more consistently
  • spell words with consonants, very few vowels are used
  • spell mostly with the beginning and ending sounds, as they are easiest to hear and feel in the mouth; (wall spelled WL and heart spelled HT)
  • say words slowly s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out the sounds as they write
  • space in between words becomes even more regular, but can still be lacking at times
  • may reverse some letters

Middle:

  • sometimes add vowels in the middle of words, so bell may be spelled BAL and boat may be BOT (long vowels are easiest to hear)
  • blends and digraphs are spelled partially (frog as FOG)
  • say words slowly s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out the sounds as they write
  • space in between words is more consistent

End:

  • begin to spell most short-vowel patterns (CVC) correctly
  • can spell most consonant blends (fr, gl, sn, etc.) and digraphs (th, sh, ch, wh) correctly
  • spell frequently used long vowel words correctly, such as like or name
  • still stretches out individual sounds in words to write them
  • most other long vowel words are spelled with short vowel patterns (PLAT for plate)
  • letter reversals are less often, but may still happen on occasion

WTW calls them Letter-Name Alphabetic Spellers

(WTW 3rd ed, 14 & Stages of Spelling Development)

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Hi! I’m Becky, a homeschooling mama with 4 blessings who keep me on my toes {and knees}. Before homeschooling, I was a classroom teacher (M.Ed.) and reading tutor. Read more about me here.

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