What developmental stage involves children developing the ability to understand sounds and letters?

The correct answer is that the partial alphabetic stage is characterized by children developing the ability to understand sounds and letters. During this stage, typically occurring around ages 4 to 5, children begin to make connections between letters and their corresponding sounds. This stage involves not just recognizing letters but also starting to develop phonemic awareness, which is essential for early reading skills.

Children might not yet fully grasp how to blend sounds to form words, but they will start to identify letters in words and associate them with sounds they hear. This foundational skill is crucial as it sets the groundwork for further reading development and enables them to progress toward full alphabetic understanding, where they can read more complex words by synthesizing sounds and letters more fluently.

In contrast, the other stages do not emphasize the same level of understanding of sounds and letters. For instance, the pre-alphabetic stage focuses primarily on recognizing familiar words as whole units, without a robust comprehension of individual letter sounds. The full alphabetic stage follows after this, where children can fluently decode words, and the transitional stage involves refining their skills as they gain proficiency in reading.