By this point in a reader's phonics journey, they've learned the most common pronunciations of graphemes and gained the confidence to sound them out. This phase, however, looks at alternative pronunciations of known graphemes, including ow, ie, and ou. It also introduces important high-frequency words such as thought, because, and through. Readers will rise to meet the challenges through interesting fiction and nonfiction texts. Images correspond to hi-lo text to provide a comprehensive reading practice. Readers will gain the confidence to sound out words with alternative pronunciations of graphemes and grow in their reading abilities.