Ehri's phases of word reading

What are the four phases?

Ehri built the phases from years of studies on how children read and remember words. Each phase is named for how much the student uses the alphabet to read. Phases overlap, and a student can be in one phase for familiar words and an earlier one for new words.

What happens in the pre-alphabetic phase?

The student uses whatever stands out: a logo, a picture, a tall letter. A four-year-old may read their favorite cereal box but not the same word printed plainly. In a 1984 study Ehri worked on, preschoolers who could "read" a familiar logo often did not notice when one of its letters was changed, because they were reading the design.

Teach letter names and sounds, and play with sounds in spoken words. Point to print when you read aloud. That is enough to move most students forward.

What happens in the partial alphabetic phase?

The student knows some letter sounds and uses them, usually the first and maybe the last letter. They read "pig" as "pen" and "cat" as "car". Their spelling shows the same thing: "BD" for "bed".

Words learned this way are easily confused, because many words share first and last letters. This is the phase where guessing habits form if students are taught to use the picture. Teach all the short vowels and full blending, and have students spell every sound they hear.

What happens in the full alphabetic phase?

The student links every letter or letter group to a sound and blends them. Reading is slow and audible at first. But the full connections let orthographic mapping work: after a few correct readings, words are stored and read on sight.

This is where systematic phonics pays off most. Students need lots of decodable text, daily dictation, and steady introduction of new patterns, such as digraphs, blends, silent e and vowel teams. Expect sight vocabulary to grow fast in this phase.

What happens in the consolidated phase?

Letter patterns that recur across many words merge into single units. The student reads "-ing", "-tion", "un-" and "-ight" as chunks. This makes reading long words much faster, since "fighting" is two units instead of six sounds.

Teach syllable types, syllable division and morphology: prefixes, suffixes and roots. These give the student bigger units to work with. Fluency practice helps consolidate them.

How do you use the phases to plan?

1. Listen to the student read a few unfamiliar words and spell a few dictated words.
2. Look at the errors. Using only first letters points to partial alphabetic. Decoding every letter slowly points to full alphabetic.
3. Teach to move the student to the next phase, not to polish the current one.
4. Check again in four to six weeks. Spelling often shows progress before reading speed does.

Spelling is the most useful window. A student who spells "jump" as "JP" is partial alphabetic. One who spells it "JUMP" has full connections for that word. Ehri found spelling and reading develop together, which is why dictation belongs in every early lesson.

Which errors point to which phase?

Errors are the fastest guide, because each phase makes its own kind of mistake. Listen to a student read ten unfamiliar words and spell five. Then sort the errors.

A spelling like "RANE" is good news. It shows full connections between sounds and letters. The student now needs the vowel team ai taught, and the word will be stored correctly. Do not mark it simply as wrong; tell the student which sounds they got right and which spelling to learn.

Keep a record of these errors over time. A student whose spellings move from "BG" to "BUG" in a month has crossed into the full alphabetic phase for short vowels, even if their reading still sounds slow.