An approach to teaching reading that starts with basic elements like letters and phonemes and teaches children that phonemes can be combined into words before moving on to reading as a whole is :

The correct option is Bottom-up approach.

Explanation:

Reading instruction generally falls into different pedagogical approaches based on how learners process textual information:

1. Bottom-up approach: This approach starts with the smallest, most basic elements of language—such as individual letters, sounds (phonemes), and symbols—and builds upward towards larger units like words, sentences, and full texts. Learners first master phonics and decoding rules before comprehending whole texts. Because the question describes starting with basic elements (letters and phonemes) and combining them into words before whole reading, it precisely defines the Bottom-up approach.

2. Top-down approach: This approach emphasizes meaning first, starting with the whole text, background knowledge, context, and overall understanding, and then looking at individual words or letters as needed.

3. Whole language approach: This perspective focuses on learning language holistically through immersive reading and context, rather than teaching phonics and basic letter-sound rules in isolation.

4. Structural approach: This refers to teaching language based on grammatical structures and sentence patterns rather than building from phonemes to reading text.