Emergent literacy, the vital period of time in which young children interact with and gain awareness of skills that support literacy development before they formally learn to read and write at school, lays the foundation for later success in reading and spelling.
In this blog, we provide an overview of emergent literacy, highlighting key concepts in Dr. Linnea Ehri’s Phases of Reading Development. Equipped with these insights, educational leaders can better implement school-wide literacy programs, establish clear literacy goals, and prioritize effective professional development to support emerging readers throughout their schools.
Dr. Ehri is an American educational psychologist and expert on the development of reading. A central part of Ehri's theory is the use of orthographic mapping to efficiently decode.
Orthographic mapping is a process that links the visual forms of words (orthography) to their spoken forms (phonology) and meanings. To engage in orthographic mapping, learners need to have developed phoneme segmentation skills to break words down into individual sounds, and must understand how graphemes (written symbols) systematically represent phonemes (speech sounds).
This grapheme-phoneme mapping process is crucial in transitioning from sounding out words, one letter at a time, to fluent reading, where words are stored in memory and attached to meaning. Over time and with continued practice, orthographic mapping enables quick, automatic word recognition, facilitating fluent reading and the reallocation of a reader’s cognitive load to meaning-making processes.
Naturally, it takes time to store words in the memory for proficient and automatic recognition by sight. According to Ehri, as these skills develop, learning to read entails a progression through four developmental phases.
Ehri’s pre-alphabetic phase corresponds closely with the typical characteristics observed in pre-readers. Generally, pre-readers are around ages 3 and 4. They might recognize some letters and may even know the letters in their names, but these are memorized forms, not yet connected to the sounds. Pre-readers do not use letter-sound relationships to spell, and their attempts at writing words typically involve random or memorized letters. They rely heavily on visual cues to read words and lack phonemic awareness, decoding, and spelling skills. For example, a child ‘reads’ the word ‘STOP’ but can only do so in the presence of a red stop sign visual. Interestingly, they can pretend to read books they've heard repeatedly, but they’re essentially reciting the text from memory, not decoding the words on the page.
Understanding the journey of emergent literacy, especially the key concepts in Linnea Ehri’s phases of reading development, provides educators with valuable insights. By recognizing reading behaviors unique to each phase, educators can provide effective, targeted support to enhance children's emergent literacy skills, setting the stage for their future reading and spelling success. For example, recognizing a pre-reader who lacks phonemic awareness cues educators to plan lessons that prioritize activities to build these skills.
Interested in learning more about growing proficient readers? Let’s start a conversation.
You can also check out our newest literacy training course, created in direct partnership with Dr. Ehri, Growing Proficient Readers: Dr. Ehris’ Phases of Development. This unique 4-hour course includes AIM's Animated Alphabet Cards with explicit instructional scripts to develop foundational literacy skills.
About AIM Institute: The AIM Institute for Learning & Research® is a non-profit center for educational excellence and professional development, providing educators with the latest research, technology, and best practices in the fields of literacy and language-based learning disabilities.