Foundational reading instruction typically builds skills in which progression?

• A. From individual sounds to forming words, sentences, and reading text.
• B. From paragraphs to sentences to letters.
• C. From whole words to phonemes to stories.
• D. From stories to letters to words.

Answer: (A)

Foundational reading instruction builds from hearing and manipulating individual sounds in spoken language toward decoding and reading connected text. Learners begin with phonemic awareness and letter-sound relationships, blend sounds to form words, then combine words into sentences, and finally read passages. This step-by-step progression supports decoding fluency, which is essential for comprehension. The other progressions jump to larger units before the basic building blocks or skip the decoding steps, which doesn’t align with how reading skills develop.