READING–What’s is this thing called reading all about? The goal of reading is comprehension, creating meaning from print! Sounds easy enough—wish it were so. The reading process is a challenge for the young brain.
The brain is designed to understand and speak thousands of languages at birth. However, by the end of a baby’s sixth month the brain has narrowed its focus down to learning the native language spoken consistently within their environment. The baby brain thrives on learning language production as evidenced all throughout the first three years of a child’s growth and development. For a young toddler learning to speak and understand word meanings becomes one of their first priorities. It’s a natural process predesigned within the brain. Reading is not a natural preprogrammed process and must be taught, since its recent evolution began with tablets in Mesopotamia circa 3,400 BCE.
What is literacy in relationship to language and reading? Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write. Acquiring oral language in order to communicate and understand ones surrounding happens first and continues throughout a lifetime. As the young brain takes on the challenge of learning to speak and increase their listening skills, it gains an awareness of reading and writing.
Reading and writing have a reciprocal relationship the two processes are deeply interconnected. One must have words in order to read anything written AND one writes words to have them read. The writing process will be discussed in more detail in future posts. First, let’s take a closer look at the various aspects which contribute to learning to read.
Road to Reading
Any long journey needs a map to get to ones’ destination successfully. The road to reading has four main stages of development starting at birth and continuing to age twelve and beyond. A child gains a variety of different skills within every stage, with each stage building and expanding upon the other. The learning reader has many challenges along the way in obtaining their end goal of becoming a fluent life-long reader, thereby, solving the mystery of reading.
Although this section of Reading Time will address the first stage – Emergent Readers – birth to five years of age (focusing on one to three), an overview of the other three stages are shown on the visuals that follow. The two visuals show the four stages with some of the key elements found within each stage. However, each individual item listed is not of equal difficulty. Learning to Read is the main goal for stages one and two, while Reading to Learn is the main focus for the third and fourth stages. This does not mean very young children are not working on understanding the content of what they are reading. No, it’s just the main priority is basic beginning reading skills to unlock the alphabetic code (phonemic code). Comprehension skills are introduced as the reader progresses.
A big shift in expectations does occur for the transitional reader, they are required to comprehend longer more complex print concepts or digital text found in multiple subject areas and literary genres. Also, vocabulary comprehension expectations are expanded to the study of morphology. Morphology is the study of the form and structure of words, for example: prefixes, root words, and suffixes.
A conceptual skill may be introduced in the emergent stage and continue to be targeted in the following stages. For example: a comprehension skill may be introduced in a simpler manner in kindergarten—”main idea” and be a part of the curriculum objectives for the following grades too. The content to be read by the child will increase in difficulty from grade to grade along with increasing the depth of comprehension skills. Schools have a set continuum of reading skills or standards to be mastered by the end of each grade level which is usually shown on a child’s report card.
The reading stages provide a directional map, starting from one point and getting to the end point. Since no two children are the same, these concepts are acquired at their own rate. This means some children will need additional help to complete their general reading skills while other students may master them at a quicker pace.
What’s exciting is that all children start on the road to reading in the emergent stage of birth to five years of age. How they progress on the road to reading depends on so many factors. An overview of the four Developmental Stages of Reading is presented in the two visuals below. This information is a guide and shows the sequence of skills that are needed to become a successful reader. There are other educational resources that include additional stages, some have divided the first stage into two parts and others have added a fifth or sixth stage, some have renamed the stages. The progression of skills to be obtained starts off and ends basically the same, always with the goal of creating a life-long reader.
The road to reading is a metaphor for a readers’ journey. Children move through the four stages of reading to become successful readers. True, but remember it is fluid movement, a back and forth between the stages at times. Each child travels on the road to reading as an individual who is impacted by many variables.
How does a child accomplish this massive goal? What are the other pieces to understand about reading beside the progression of skills as shown in the four stages?
Other questions to consider when solving the mystery of reading are below:
How does a young brain learn to read?
What is the connection to scientific research?
What are the pillars or key components of reading?
What other literacy components are connected to reading?
What are the best practices and activities to support a young child’s literacy learning?
How do parents and teachers help assist children in gaining reading skills?
How do all these pieces and even MORE fit together in order to create a fluent reader?
When I taught reading skills to young children and was able to see a child’s confidence shine because they realized they had done it—read! My heart jumped for joy! Watching their first steps towards becoming fluent readers was and still is amazing.
Happy days to you,
Kylene
“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.”
Walt Disney, Film Producer
Resources & References
Collins, Molly F., Schickedanz, Judith A., (2024), So Much More Than The ABCs, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
ELT Buzz English,(2024), From ABCs to Fluency: Navigating the Stages of Reading Development, A Guide to Student Literacy, https://youtu.be/KJck9BkCT2Q?si=mqcJqAMGvHxzMAEJ
Kharbach, Med,Phd(20240,The 5 Stages of Reading Development, Educators Technology, https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2023/04/the-5-stages-of-reading-development.html
Language on the Move, (2020), Who Invented Writing?, https://www.languageonthemove.com/who-invented-writing/
Reading Rockets, Stages of Reading Development, Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/about-reading/articles/stages-reading-development
Otto Beverly, (2019), Literacy Development in Early Childhood, 2nd edition, Waveland Press, Inc.