Word Pattern Readers and Spellers {Stage 3}

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been working through a series on the 5 Stages of Literacy Development. We’ve explored Emergent Readers & Spellers and Alphabetic Readers & Spellers so far. Today, we’re exploring Word Pattern Readers and Spellers, which is stage 3.

Children in this stage are sometimes referred to as developing, transitional, or in the consolidated word stage. Typically, kids in this stage are 7-9 years old, although younger and older readers/spellers may be in it, too.

If I had to pick one thing that identifies kids in this stage is that they begin to chunk parts of words instead of reading them sound-by-sound. For example, wrist would be processed as two chunks: 1-wr and 2-ist instead of wr-i-s-t.

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All About Word Pattern Readers & Spellers

Listed in this post are some reading and spelling behaviors you may notice of a child in the word pattern stage of literacy learning. Just a quick reminder that the “checklists” in these posts aren’t meant to box in you or your child/student. They are only a tool to help us become more observant in regards to what our kids know or don’t know yet. This is such valuable information to help guide our teaching.

Many of these characteristics were gathered from Words Their Way, a spelling program rooted in the developmental needs of kids. Words their Way calls this the Within Word Pattern Stage.

Please Note 3 Things:
1. Children with processing differences, like dyslexia, may struggle with many of these concepts and the ones from the stages before. I have some great resources for dyslexia, struggling readers, and struggling spellers that may be helpful.
2. As we get further into the stages of literacy development, many kids probably won’t fit perfectly into one stage, as some skills may be more developed than others.
3. That being said, our job is to meet the child/student where he is (not where his age group says he should be) and teach the concepts he needs.

You can download this printable list HERE.

Word Pattern Reading Behaviors

At the Beginning:

able to hear and count individual sounds in words (phonemes)
silent reading is vocalized much of the time
begin to recognize and process common chunks, like word families, -ck, or –est
self-correct more when what is read doesn’t make sense
read more fluently
start to focus more on comprehension as decoding becomes easier
able to recognize more high frequency words by sight

In the Middle:

read silently without much vocalizing
need less context clues to figure out unknown words
recognize many more high frequency words by sight
process word chunks (such as ea, ai, wh) while reading often, but still may not be automatic just yet
comprehend easier, as the mind is freed more from decoding words (nonfiction is often harder to comprehend because of vocabulary and text structure)
begins to read many 2- or even 3- syllable words if there’s enough context to support him

At the End

able to read silently without vocalizing
chunking unknown words becomes more automatic
discuss what’s read in more depth as texts become longer and more complex
sight word recognition and accuracy greatly increase
reading sounds even more fluent, as readers think beyond word-by-word and more phrase-by-phrase

Reading Resources for Students in this Stage

Teaching Text Structure – a 5 day series

Teaching Kids to Summarize Text Using Basic Signal Words

Word Pattern Spelling Behaviors

At the Beginning:

spell most one-syllable short vowel patterns correctly
spell most r-influenced CVC words correctly (star, fork, girl)
may still reverse the spellings of words (FORM instead of from)
spell most common sight words correctly, such as the, like, play, etc.
long vowel team patterns are often spelled incorrectly (WATE for wait or BOTE for boat)

In the Middle:

common long vowel patterns begin to be spelled correctly
word endings such as –ck, -tch, and –dge are often spelled wrong
confuse less common long vowel patterns, spelling CHOO for chew

At the End:

spell common long vowel patterns correctly (CVCe & CVVC)
begin to spell less common long vowel pattern correctly, like igh or ew
still confuse the spellings of other ambiguous vowels like oi or au
begin to spell words with more complex consonant patterns correctly such as –tch, str– or thr– (still may confuse them)
confuse the spellings of vowels in unaccented syllables (MARBUL for marble or ACTER for actor)