The different phases of reading development.

Five core skills to read well

The ability to read is fundament for the success in school. As educational success is a key factor to escape poverty it is important to start with reading as early as possible. Children that do not learn how to read well are severely handicapped in the school career, if you can’t properly read you cannot properly learn how to write. There are 5 core skills that a child requires grasp to read well.

1. Phonemic awareness - focusing on, manipulating, breaking apart and putting together sounds orally.

2. Phonics - the ability to map each letter to its corresponding sound, word recognition, the simple decoding of letters to sounds and forming spelling patterns.

3. Fluency - achieving speed, accuracy and expression in reading.

4. Vocabulary - knowing words both written and orally and the meaning of the word.

5. Comprehension - understanding the concepts read or heard.

Children learn these important reading skills in multiple stages. Children do not all develop their reading skills in same way and in the same place. But all children will progress through a series of phases in their reading development. We can recognize 3 different phases of acquiring the ability of reading with different stages in each phases.

The first phase

In phase 1 children start with the development of Emergent Literacy in which they gain control of oral language and rely heavily on pictures, pretend to read and recognize rhyme. We call this stage 0. This stage is from birth to grade 1. When children get a little older and have developed in emergent literacy they begin with Decoding, they grow awareness of sound/symbol relationships and start to focus on printed symbols and attempt to break code of print and use decoding to figure out words. This is what we call the stage of Decoding stage 1 and is in general reached by children in the beginning of grade 1 in school. Furthermore already during the first phase of reading development children build their vocabulary.

Concepts of print and print awareness

In the first phase of acquiring reading skills it is important to introduce the children to written language and the different types of written media like books, newspapers, manuals but also things like postcards, text messages, labels etc. and to teach the functions these different texts have. Besides the introduction of print concepts it is important to teach print awareness. Teaching print awareness means that the children are taught where they should begin with reading, in which direction they should read and when they get to the end of a line where they should start next. A very important way of introducing children to written language is by reading to them. A final element which is very important to teach the little children when they are being red to and start with learning how to read is to teach them how to correctly take of the books and what they can and cannot do. They have to understand that a reading book is not a work book or note book and that they have to keep the book in a good condition so other children can read the book to.

How to handle the books with care

 Alphabet

Because the learners in this first phase grow sound/symbol awareness or phonemic awareness and the phonics(see for further elaboration below) it is very appropriate and important to teach the little children the alphabet and the sound of each letter and common letter pairs. Only teaching the name of the letter is not enough as a letter may be pronounced differently depending on the word. For example g in the word green sounds different from the g in giraffe.

Phonemic awareness and phonics

In this first phase of acquiring reading skills the children establish basic skills like phonological awareness (the ability to hear and produce the individual sounds heard within words) which sets the foundation for the phonics (the ability to map each letter to its corresponding sound, word recognition and the simple decoding of letters to sounds). The learner is acquiring a knowledge of the smallest building blocks of reading by recognizing letter sounds and their combination into simple words. Important to the development of the foundation of reading in this first phase is identifying and storing familiar words by creating a bank of automatic or ‘sight’ words - words that children can recognize on sight. Equally crucial is the establishment of fluent decoding, the ability to decode new or unfamiliar words through an understanding of letter-sound correspondence.

The second phase

In the second phase children at the end of the first grade move to stage 2 of Confirmation and Fluency, they become more fluent in reading, recognizes patterns in words, check for meaning and sense and knows a stock of side words. Children not only decode the text but also derive its meaning. From grade 4 to 8 children are in stage 3 of ‘Learning the New’. They use reading as a tool for learning, apply reading strategies, they can link words to form sentences, paragraphs and stories. They start to comprehend stories but only from a single viewpoint.

Syntax and semantic development

In the second phase children acquire reading skills like syntax development (the rules that govern language) and semantic development (the ability to understand the meaning of words, making a connection between words and finding synonyms for them). In this phase children start to learn words and build on their vocabulary and are ready to start with the full understanding of spelling. Extending their vocabulary is an integral part of teaching children how to read. In the second phase it is appropriate to introduce the children to basic reading by showing them two or three letter, one-syllable words. Continue to introduce more words and gradually introduce longer and more complex words. At the end of the second language development phase the base for reading has been lead out. Children have built on both their oral and reading fluency and also start to comprehend more and more of the text. The learners control technical reading and…

The third phase

The third and last phase is something that especially your colleagues in higher education while deal with. But we still provide you with information about this phase to give you an complete overview of the language development children will go through. In the last phase children move the stage of Multiple Viewpoints, stage 4. Which takes place during secondary and early higher education. The children analyze what is read, reacts critically to texts; deal with layers of facts and concepts and comprehend from multiple points of view. After this stage children move the final stage of a World View, stage 5. The children develop a complete world view through reading. This happens in later higher education and graduate school. This phase is really about the final sophistication and the development of very complex elements of reading skills.

Comprehension

In the third phase children acquire full reading comprehension. In this phase they develop further and finalize the pragmatic (the ability to use language for social communication, including request, refusals, etc. as well as using metaphors and idioms) and morphological development. They are now capable of attributing meaning to text and have ability to translate letters in to sounds, unify sounds into words, process connections and make inferences to fill in missing information. The learners can completely comprehend stories and have the ability to understand and make sense of a narrative. By now the children should be fluent in reading and have the ability to read quickly and accurately, with appropriate rhythm, intonation and expression.