Letter Name-Alphabetic Stage

Description

This is the stage where students are starting to learn to read. Students are learning that letters on the paper represent sounds. Students are typically between the ages of 4-7 years old at this stage, although students may reach the next stage earlier than 7 years old. For more information check out the phonics page to see a chart of the different phonemes of the English language.

Instructional Strategy

• Stretchy Snake (phonics writing)
  • When demonstrating a writing lesson stop on harder words and stretch out the sounds. 
  • Write down the sounds the students hear when you stretched out the word
  • Have students practice writing and use the stretchy snake strategy to see how many sounds they can write in their word.

The next spelling stage is Within Word Pattern Stage.

References​

• Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Johnston, F. R., & Templeton, S. (2020). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling instruction (7th ed.). Harlow, United Kingdom.
• DiGilio, A. (2020, October 28). How to teach the stretchy snake strategy to emergent readers. Guided Readers. Retrieved July 31, 2022, from https://parents.guidedreaders.com/how-to-teach-the-stretchy-snake-strategy-to-emergent-readers