Which term describes a part-to-whole phonics approach to reading instruction in which the student learns the sounds represented by letters and letter combinations; blends these sounds to pronounce words; and finally identifies which phonic generalizations apply?

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The main idea here is how a part-to-whole phonics instruction unfolds. In this approach, learners start with the building blocks—the sounds represented by letters and letter combinations. They practice blending these sounds to pronounce words, and only after that do they identify which phonics generalizations apply to different patterns they’ve encountered.

This sequence—focus on the individual sounds first, then blend to read words, then derive or identify the generalizations—fits an inductive, or discovery-based, way of teaching phonics. It emphasizes moving from concrete pieces to broader rules, rather than starting with a general rule and applying it to text.

So why this is the best fit: the description centers on building from explicit sound-letter knowledge, using those pieces to form words, and culminating in recognizing the applicable generalizations, which matches the inductive, part-to-whole approach. The other options describe different ideas—intrinsic phonics as a more natural, immersion-based idea, fluent reading as an outcome, and grade equivalent scores as an assessment metric—none of which capture the described instructional sequence.