In the Early Alphabetic stage of development, what do children begin to associate letters with?

In the Early Alphabetic stage of development, children start to establish connections between letters and their corresponding sounds, which is a fundamental aspect of learning to read and write. This stage is characterized by children understanding that letters represent sounds in spoken language, often beginning with simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, such as "cat" or "dog." This foundational skill is crucial for developing literacy, as it allows children to decode words and understand the relationship between written symbols and spoken sounds.

Other options do not align with the Early Alphabetic stage. Associating letters with phonograms and syllables pertains to later stages of reading development, where children begin to understand more complex spelling patterns. Visual memory of words is more significant in later stages when students are familiar with a larger sight vocabulary and can recognize whole words without phonetic decoding. Similarly, connecting letters to complex texts and their meanings typically occurs in advanced stages of literacy, when children have a deeper understanding of text structure and language use. Thus, the focus of the Early Alphabetic stage is primarily on sound-letter correspondence.