Emergent Stage
Birth-3 years old
What is the age range for emergent stage?
This is the typical grade range for Letter Name-Alphabetic spellers
What is kindergarten through 2nd grade?
This silent letter pattern signals that the preceding vowel is long, as in "make.
What is the silent e or CVCe pattern?
-s, -ed, and -ing.
What are inflected endings?
The silent "g" in "sign" becomes audible in this related word
What is signature (or signal)?
pre-alphabetic
What is Ehri's first stage of word reading?
Students in this stage often omit these interior sounds, spelling "DRV" for "drive."
What are the vowels?
Words like "meat," "seat," and "beat" follow this type of long vowel pattern
What are vowel teams or vowel digraphs?
When adding suffixes to words ending in "y," students learn to do this first, as in "happier."
What is change y to i?
These meaningful word parts from Greek and Latin are the focus of this stage
What are roots, prefixes, or suffixes (or morphemes)?
A child writing "LFTBR" for "elephant" is demonstrating this early spelling behavior.
What is invented spelling?
Students spell "JRP" for "drip" because they're using this strategy
What is spelling by sound or using letter names?
These tricky r-controlled vowel patterns are mastered in this stage, like in "stir," "her," and "fur."
What are r-controlled vowels?
Understanding how to divide "rabbit" and "silent" requires knowledge of these two-syllable patterns.
What are closed and open syllables?
Understanding why "compete" becomes "competition" involves this vowel change pattern.
What is a vowel alternation (or long to short vowel shift)?
This is the term for when children match one letter or mark to represent an entire word or syllable.
What is one-to-one correspondence?
The reason students write "CHRAN" for "train" is they can't yet represent these complex sounds
What are blends or consonant blends?
Students confuse these pairs: "TRANE/TRAIN" and "ROAP/ROPE."
What are long vowel patterns or vowel diagraphs?
This spelling rule determines whether you write "hopping" or "hoping.
What is the doubling rule?
The root "spec" means this, connecting words like "spectator," "inspect," and "spectacles."
What is "to look" or "to see"?
Random scribbles or marks that don't yet resemble letters
What is emergent writing?
Short vowels are typically mastered before these in this stage
What are long vowels or vowel digraphs?
Students in this stage learn to distinguish between homophones like these two words: one means "simple" and one means "aircraft."
What are plain and plane?
This type of syllable ends in a consonant and has a short vowel sound, like the first syllable in "rabbit" or "napkin."
What are closed syllables?
This consonant becomes audible when "magic" changes to "magician"
What is the letter c (or the sh sound)?