A small group of second-grade students is able to read a list of teacher-provided words that will be included in an assigned text. The students are likely in which stage of word recognition according to Ehri's model?

• A. Consolidated Alphabetic
• B. Partial Alphabetic
• C. Pre-Alphabetic
• D. Full Alphabetic

Answer: (A)

In the Consolidated Alphabetic stage, readers have built up a sizeable bank of sight words and known letter patterns, so they can read many words by recognizing them as whole units rather than sounding out every letter. The fact that these second-graders can read a list of words that will appear in a text shows they’re relying on stored word knowledge and familiar patterns to read quickly, not decoding each word from scratch. That familiarity with common word forms and chunks is what characterizes the Consolidated Alphabetic stage.

This wouldn’t be as fitting for the earlier stages, where readers rely more on pictures or partial letter cues, or on decoding more of the word by letter-by-letter mapping.