During the phonetic stage, children will use a letter or groups of letters to represent the sounds that they hear. They are beginning to demonstrate the connection between letters and their sounds (e.g., the letter ‘s’ corresponds with the sound /ssss/). This often results in invented spelling. Students can get stuck in this stage. It is important to be aware of these stages of writing to best support individual development.

• 5+ to 7+ years
• Maps sounds
• Major sounds are represented
• Word segmentation improves
• Spelling shows sequence of sounds

How to support the phonetic stage:

• Phoneme Grapheme Mapping 
• Sound walls