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Kendra Rambo
ED 261: The Science of Reading
Assignment 5
September 27, 2012

5b. Discuss the five phases of word knowledge development. Each phase should have a separate
paragraph, be indented, and have three or more sentences.
As students progress in school, they go through many stages of word knowledge
development. According to Temple, Ogle, Crawford, and Freppon (2011), the five phases of
word knowledge development include: the logographic phase, the alphabetic phase, the
orthographic phase, the morphological phase, and the derivational phase. Children go through all
of these stages at some point in their lives, but they may be a little ahead or a little behind the
estimated age allocated to each stage (Temple et al., 2011).
The first phase of word knowledge development is the logographic phase. It is in this
phase that children, usually by mid-Kindergarten, begin to recognize words as wholes (Temple
et al., 2011, p. 133). This means that they do not see the individual letters that make up the word,
but instead recognize the whole word by its visual appearance (Temple et al., 2011). For
example, children at this stage can typically recognize their own name and/or symbols that stand
for words such as star. Although they can visually remember the way some words appear during
the logographic phase, they do not yet have a strategy for sounding out words (Temple et al.,
2011, p. 133). Children will gain a better understanding of this concept during the next phase.
The second phase of word knowledge development is the alphabetic phase. By this phase,
children in early first grade are beginning to read words by their letters, but not by very many
letters (Temple et al., 2011, p. 134). Readers in this stage can usually sound out unknown words

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by pronouncing each letters sound, even though the pronunciation may not make sense (Temple
et al., 2011). This can be illustrated by the word friend. A student in this phase may read this as
fr-y-ee-nd. To a fluent reader, this is obviously not how you would pronounce this word.
However, because readers are sounding out each letters sound, the pronunciation of the word
does not make sense. Over time and with practice, children will pronounce fewer nonsense
words and will start to spell them correctly too.
The orthographic phase, also known as chunking, is the third phase of word knowledge
development. This phase typically occurs by late first grade and on into the middle of second
grade (Temple et al., 2011, p. 133). Readers by this phase have begun to look past the individual
letters and sounds of each word and now focus on particular spelling patterns (Temple et al.,
2011). These spelling patterns may include but are not limited to: -ake, -ame, -ock, and ide. In
other words, children are able to distinguish between the onsets and rimes. Take the spelling
pattern ame, for example. When you add g- it makes game and if you add s- it makes same. If
children can read these words, then they should also be able to read the words name and blame
because they have the same phonogram patterns (Temple et al., 2011). In addition, children can
also recognize that some groups of letters have a long vowel sound and some have a short
vowel sound depending on the ways the vowels are marked during the orthographical phase
(Temple et al., 2011, p. 139).
The fourth phase of word knowledge development is the morphological phase. About the
time children are in late second to fourth grade, children begin reading by meaningful word
parts (Temple et al., 2011, p. 135). It is during this phase that there three kinds of word parts
that come into play. The first type of word part that children notice occurs in many compound
words, such as in the word houseboat. Children can visualize two words within that one word,

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house and boat. Therefore, they conclude that two smaller words can come together to make a
bigger word that virtually has a new meaning. The second kind of word part that children
recognize are called grammatical morphemes (Temple et al., 2011, p. 135). These include tense
endings and plural markers (Temple et al, 2011). At this phase, children know the difference
between like and liked, and bike and bikes. The last kind of meaningful word part deals with
prefixes and suffixes. Children can tell the difference between the prefix dis- in dislike and the
suffix ful in graceful. As word knowledge increasingly develops, less focus is on the letter and
sound relations and more focus is on actually reading and writing (Temple et al., 2011).
The derivational phase is the fifth and final phase in word knowledge development. From
grades four and up, students who read at an average level should be able to recognize that many
words have word parts in them that they have already seen before (Temple et al., 2011). For
example, children may come across the words such as biology, psychology, archaeology, and
zoology. All of these words have the word part ology which comes from the Greek word logos
meaning the study of. Anytime children come across a similar word in their reading, they
should recognize that the word must mean the study of something. Children also notice the
family relationships between words during this phase, such as sane and sanity (Temple et al.,
2011). The alternate name for this phase is reading for word histories and families because that
is what children are doing during this phase, which is evident in the examples that were just
mentioned (Temple et al., 2011, p. 136).
Reading from this point on builds on all five phases of word knowledge development. It
is important that children keep these in mind whenever they pick up a book. If they ever come
across an unknown word, they always have a way that they can learn to pronounce the word. As

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educators, it is our job to teach them the strategies from each phase and work to make each
student a better reader.