Orthographic Mapping: Our Reading and Spelling Engine

A typical adult can read between 30 and 70,000 words by sight. Now, I don't know about you, but I haven't spent time memorizing 70,000 words via flashcards. So how do we go from being illiterate to being able to instantly recognise tens of thousands of words?

One intrepid educational psychologist, Professor Linnea C. Ehri, made it her mission to solve this - her answer has become a landmark theory in the world of reading and spelling.

Professor Ehri discovered that we possess an incredible mental process for remembering words, which in turn helps us to read by sight and spell from memory. Professor Ehri's term for this? Orthographic mapping.

What is Orthographic Mapping?

Orthographic mapping is the process through which we map a written artifact's phonological (fancy word for "sound") representation, orthographic/textual representation and semantic represention (its meaning) into long term memory. When we learn a word we don't just jam the whole word into our visual memory - instead we strip the word down into its phonological, orthographic and semantic parts and store each part in its easiest to reach spot. This way we can efficiently recall the word later.

This mapping process begins well before we are literate. That's how my son could say and recognise "Lego" or "Hot Wheels" before he could read the words. Writing that down now, I really wish I'd done a better job of steering that mapping towards, I don't know, modern art "Look daddy a Pollock!"

Of course, we aren't here to discuss my regrets as a parent. No, here we are interested in orthographic mapping.

The Phases of Orthographic Mapping

Orthographic mapping, Ehri notes, develops through four phases. Understanding these helps us to understand how we go from having to effortfully decode the word "dog" to being able to almost instantly read the word "Aegyptosaurus".

Pre-alphabetic Phase

Children recognize words purely by their visual features, like identifying a logo (see above). But can't associate letters in that logo with their corresponding sounds.

Partial Alphabetic Phase

In the partial alphabetic phase, the child begins connecting some letters to sounds, often using the first and last letters of words. For the word "reacting", the learner recognizes 'r' at the start and 'g' at the end. They might read it as "ring" or "running," using these boundary letters as anchors but missing the internal structure. By way of example, My 3 year old daughter recently hid a toy mushroom in her pocket and gave me the clue "It starts with /muh/" for the "mu-" in the 'mushroom'.

Full Alphabetic Phase

During the full alphabetic phase, the child forms complete connections between letters and sounds They can now connect each letter to its sound, processing the word as individual phonemes: /r/ /a/ /n/ /g/. They decode the word by sounding out and blending. This is where phonics is in full flight.

Consolidated Alphabetic Phase

The child starts to recognize syllable patterns and uses this knowledge to decode longer words. They recognize common syllable patterns, for example, processing the word as "re-act-ing." They automatically know these chunks rather than having to sound out each letter - much more efficient for processing longer words.

By this phase, children also understand how morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in a word, are represented in written language. The student can recognize the morphemes in a word: "re" (again), "act" (to do something), and "ing" (happening now). They understand both the pronunciation and meaning through these morpheme patterns.

Moving Through the Phases of Orthographic Mapping

Building up the pathways for efficient orthographic mapping requires systematic explicit instruction moving from phonemic awareness and phonics to instruction in morphology (and etymology).

Phonemic awareness instruction focuses on identifying and manipulating sounds in spoken words through activities like segmenting, eg. by air chopping a word (the word is "cat". Chop it: /k/ /a/ /t/"), or phoneme manipulation through adding, deleting or substituting sounds, for example, saying "steam" without "s". Phonics instruction helps learners connect these sound skills to written symbols through explicitly teaching the sounds letters can spell, decoding words, segmenting words for spelling, and word chaining.

Morphological instruction can (and arguably should) start while learners are still working through their phonics - simple concepts like adding '-s' for plurals can be a huge unlock. Once students establish strong alphabetic skills, instruction can expand to more sophisticated morphology. Activities like word sums (un + help + ful), morpheme substitution exercises, and studying word origins and word families. We love morphology because it supports word recognition, extended spelling and comprehension.

Morphology becomes particularly powerful when readers begin to encounter more and more academic vocabulary. Take a word like 'photosynthesis'. Instead of trying to decode it purely with phonics, skilled readers break It breaks down into meaningful chunks: 'phot(o)' (light), 'syn' (together), 'thesis' (putting/placing). This isn't just helping them read the word - it's helping them understand what it means. Suddenly reading becomes much more meaningful, likewise our ability to compose higher quality text.

Spellcaster and Orthographic Mapping

Spellcaster's game is purposefully designed to support orthographic mapping from a variety of angles. For example, Mystic Match strengthens letter-sound connections, Phoneme Forge focuses on manipulating sounds to change words, Word Weaver tasks students with spelling words. As students progress, the game Word Sums introduce morphological patterns, where students contstruct words from their constituent morphemes. Spellcaster follows a systematic synthetic phonics and morphology scope and sequence with plenty of interleaved practice throughout. Spellcaster's structured, sequential, and mastery oriented approach is designed to help learners form and strengthen the mental connections between speech sounds and spelling patterns that underpin successful orthographic mapping.

Conclusion

Orthographic mapping is a critical process for acquiring sight words and unlocking fluent reading and writing. The more quickly this process can rev up the more quickly we can enjoy the gifts of being fully literate — human flourishing emotionally, civically, psychologically and economically.