"[In] a developmental theory, literacy is not a unmarried skill that simply gets better ... Beingness literate is very unlike for the skilled showtime grader, quaternary grader, loftier schoolhouse student, and adult, and the effects of school experiences can be quite different at different points in a child'south development."
— Catherine Snowfall, et al, 1991, pg 9

Literacy is not something that just happens. One does not wake up literate nor does i go literate in the same way that one learns to walk. It is non intuited from the surround nor is information technology just a matter of concrete maturation. Literacy learning requires instruction and practice,  and this learning occurs across discrete stages. The following notes explore the five stages of reading development equally proposed by Maryanne Wolf (2008) in her book Proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading brain.These five stages are:

  • the emerging pre-reader (typically between six months to 6 years former);

  • the novice reader (typically between 6 to seven years one-time);

  • the decoding reader (typically between 7 - nine years old);

  • the fluent, comprehending reader (typically between ix - 15 years old); and

  • the skilful reader (typically from 16 years and older).

Please explore, and also visit the Stages of Literacy Development folio for a more detailed word. Before we brainstorm with the stages, in that location are two preliminary notes to make.

Preliminary Note #1: "As every teacher knows, emotional engagement is the tipping point between leaping into the reading life ... An enormously of import influence on the development of comprehension in childhood is what happens after we remember, predict, and infer: we feel, we identify, and in the the process we understand more fully and can't wait to plough the page. The kid ... often needs heartfelt encouragement from teachers, tutors and parents to make a stab at more difficult reading material." (Wolf, 2008, p 132)

"Without an affective investment and commitment, our words become unintelligible and empty; with that commitment words begin to prove other manners of signification beyond the realm of literal meaning and correspondence." (Krebs, 2010, pg 138)

Preliminary Note #2:Beyond this lengthy flow of development, leaners are required to consolidate certain skills just to run across new challenges. The one rule that applies equally is as follows: "Experts [agree] that readers, no matter which reading philosophy is followed, take to practice, practice, practice." (You Demand /r/ /ee/ /d/ to Read). At that place is no better way to exemplify this than in the following anecdote from Maryanne Wolf's book Proust and the squid: the story and scientific discipline of the reading brain.

"I exercise not remember that first moment of knowing I could read, merely some of my memories - of a tiny, two-room school with viii grades and 2 teachers - evokes many pieces of what the linguistic communication expect Anthony Bashir calls the 'natural history' of the reading life. The natural history of reading begins with elementary exercises, practices, and accuracy, and ends, if 1 is lucky, with the tools and the chapters to 'leap into transcendence.'" (Wolf, 2008, p 109)

"My other vivid retentivity of those days centres on Sister Salesia, trying her utmost to teach the children who couldn't seem to learn to read. I watched her listening patiently to these children'south torturous attempts during the school twenty-four hour period, and and then all over over again later on school, one child at a time ... My best friend, Jim, ... looked like a pale version of himself, haltingly coming upward with the letter sounds Sis Salesia asked for. It turned my world topsy-turvy to see this indomitable boy and then unsure of himself. For at to the lowest degree a year they worked quietly and determinedly after schoolhouse concluded." (Wolf, 2008, p 111 - 112)

Phase i: The Emergent Pre-reader (typically betwixt vi months to half-dozen years old)(back to height)

"The emergent pre-reader sits on 'honey laps,' samples and learns from a full range of multiple sounds, words, concepts, images, stories, exposure to print, literacy materials, and just patently talk during the beginning five years of life. The major insight in this period is that reading never simply happens to anyone. Emerging reading arises out of years of perceptions, increasing conceptual and social development, and cumulative exposures to oral and written language." (Wolf, 2008, p 115)

"Although each of the sensory and motor regions is myelinated and functions independently before a person is five years of age, the principal regions of the brain that underlie our power to integrate visual, verbal, and auditory information apace -- like the angular gyrus -- are not fully myelinated in most humans until five years of age and afterwards ...What nosotros conclude from this research is that the many efforts to teach a kid to read earlier four or five years of age are biologically precipitate and potentially counterproductive for many children." (Wolf, 2008, p 94 - 96)

By the end of this stage, the child "pretends" to read, tin can - over time - retell a story when looking at pages of book previously read to him/her, can names letters of alphabet; tin recognises some signs; tin prints ain name; and plays with books, pencils and paper. The child acquires skills by beingness dialogically read to by an adult (or older child) who responds to the kid'south questions and who warmly appreciates the child's interest in books and reading. The kid sympathise thousands of words they hear by age vi but tin can read few if whatsoever of them.

(see Stages of Literacy Evolution for further discussion.)

Stage 2: The Novice Reader (typically between 6 to 7 years former)(back to top)

In this stage, the child is learning the relationships betwixt letters and sounds and between printed and spoken words. The child starts to read simple text containing high frequency words and phonically regular words, and uses emerging skills and insights to "sound out" new one-syllable words.  There is direct instruction in alphabetic character-sound relations (phonics). The child is existence read to on a level above what a child tin can read independently to develop more advanced language patterns, vocabulary and concepts. In late Stage 2, well-nigh children tin can understand up to 4000 or more than words when heard but can read nearly 600.

"Any her literacy environs, whatever her methods of instruction ... the tasks for ... every novice reader begins with learning to decode print and to understand the meaning of what has been decoded. To get there, every child must figure out the alphabetic principle that took our ancestors thousands of years to find." (Wolf, pg 116)

"The major discovery for a novice reader is ... [the] increasingly consolidated concept that letters connect to sounds of the language." (Wolf, pp 117)

"Learning all the grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules in decoding comes next for her, and this involves one part discovery and many parts hard piece of work. Aiding both are iii code-great capacities: the phonological, orthographic, and the semantic areas of language learning." (Wolf, pp 117)

"Gradually they larn to hear and dispense the smaller phonemes in syllables and words, and this power is one of the best predictors of a child's success in learning to read." (Wolf, pp117)

"A useful method for helping novice readers with phoneme awareness and blending involves 'phonological recording.' This may seem to be just a pretentious term for reading aloud, but 'reading aloud' would exist too unproblematic a term for what is really a two-role dynamic process. Reading aloud underscores for children the human relationship between their oral language and their written i. Information technology provides novice readers with their own form of self teaching." (Wolf, pp 118)

"Reading out loud as well exposes for the instructor and any listener the strategies and common errors typical for a particular child." (Wolf, pp 119)

"In every domain of learning - from riding a wheel to understanding the concept of death - children develop along a continuum of cognition, moving from a partial concept to an established concept." (Wolf, pp 116)

Orthography

"Orthographic development consists of learning the entirety of these visual conventions for depicting a detail language, with its repertoire of mutual letter of the alphabet patterns and of seemingly irregular usages ... Children learn orthographic conventions one footstep at a time." (Wolf, pp 120)

"However one labels information technology, orthographic evolution for novice readers requires multiple exposures to print - practice past whatever other name." (Wolf, pp 120 - 121)

"Explicit learning of common vowel patterns, morpheme units, and varied spelling patterns in English language (e.g. the prickly clusters of consonants that precede many a word) aids the work of the visual system." (Wolf, pp 121)

Semantics (vocabulary)

"For some children, knowledge of a word's meaning pushes their halting decoding into the existent thing." (Wolf, pp 122)

"For thousands of code-not bad novice readers ... semantic evolution plays much more of a function than many advocates of phonics recognise, just far less of a role than advocates of whole language assume." (Wolf, pp 122)

"If the meaning of the child's awkwardly decoded word is readily available, his or her utterance has a meliorate chance of being recognised as a word and also remembered and stored." (Wolf, pp 123)

"Explicit education in vocabulary in the classroom addresses some of the problem, merely novice readers need to learn much more than the surface significant of a word, even for their simple stories. They as well need to be knowledge and flexible regarding a word's multiple uses and functions in different contexts." (Wolf, pp 124)

(see Stages of Literacy Development for further discussion.)

Stage 3: The Decoding Reader (typically between 7 - 9 years old)(back to peak)

In this stage, the child is reading uncomplicated, familiar stories and selections with increasing fluency. This is washed by consolidating the basic decoding elements, sight vocabulary, and meaning in the reading of familiar stories and selections. In that location is straight education in advanced decoding skills besides as broad reading  of familiar, interesting materials. The child is withal being read to at levels above their ain independent reading level to develop language, vocabulary and concepts. In late Stage 3, about 3000 words can be read and understood and about 9000 are known when heard. Listening is still more constructive than reading.

"If yous listen to children in the decoder reader phase, you will 'hear' the difference. Gone are the painful, if heady pronunciations ... In their identify comes the sound of a smoother, more confident reader on the verge of becoming fluent." (Wolf, pp 127)

"In this stage of semi-fluency, readers need to add at least 3,000 words to what they can decode, making the 30-seven common letters patterns learned earlier are no longer enough. To do this, they demand to exist exposed to the side by side level of common letter patterns and to acquire the pesky variations of the vowel-based rimes and vowel pairs." (Wolf, pp 127 - 128)

"In improver, they acquire to 'encounter' the chunks automatically. 'Sight words' add of import elements to the achievements of novice readers. 'Sight-chunks' propel semi-fluency in the decoding reader. The faster a child tin see that 'beheaded' is exist + head + ed, the more than probable information technology is that more than fluent give-and-take identification will allow the integration of this awful word." (Wolf, pp 128)

"Fluent word recognition is significantly propelled past both vocabulary and grammatical noesis. The increasingly sophisticated materials that decoding readers are get-go to principal are likewise difficult if the words and their uses are seldom or never encountered by the children." (Wolf, pp 129)

"With each pace forward in reading and spelling, children tacitly learn a great deal about what's inside a word -- that is, the stems, roots, prefixes and suffixes that brand upward the morphemes of our language." (Wolf, pp 129)

"And they begin to see that many words share common orthographically displayed roots that convey related meanings despite different pronunciations (e.g. sign, signer, signed, signing, signature)." (Wolf, pp 129 - 130)

"Fluency is not a matter of speed; it is a matter of being able to utilize all the special knowledge a child has nearly a word -- its letters, letter patterns, meanings, grammatical functions, roots and endings -- fast enough to have fourth dimension to think and comprehend. Everything about a word contributes to how fast information technology can be read. The indicate of becoming fluent, therefore, is to read -- really read -- and understand." (Wolf, pp 130 - 131)

"To exist sure, decoding readers are skittish, young, and but start to learn how to use their expanding cognition of language and their growing powers of influence to effigy out a text. The neuroscientist Laurie Cutting of John Hopkins explains some nonlinguistic skills that contribute to the evolution of reading comprehension in these children: for example, how well they can enlist key executive functions such as working memory and comprehension skills such as inference and analogy." (Wolf, pp 131)

  • CV: A script y'all tin read fluently works on you very differently from one that you can write; merely non decipher easily. You lot can lock your thoughts in this as though in a casket.

"Fluency does not ensure better comprehension; rather, fluency gives extra time to the executive system to direct attending where it is most needed - to infer, to sympathise, to predict, or sometimes to repair discordant understanding and to interpret a meaning afresh." (Wolf, pp 131)

"It is the moment when children first learn to go 'beyond the data given.' It is the start of what will ultimately exist the nearly important contribution to the reading brain: fourth dimension to think." (Wolf, pp 132)

"A child in this phase of development also needs to know just that he or she must read a word, sentence, or paragraph a 2nd time to understand it correctly. Knowing when to reread a text (e.thousand. to revise a false interpretation or to get more data) to better comprehension is function of what [is referred to] every bit 'comprehension monitoring.'" (Wolf, pp 132)

"[It] emphasises the importance of the child at this phase of development of a kid'southward being able to modify strategies if something does not brand sense, and of a teacher'south powerful role in facilitating that alter." (Wolf, pp 132)

Barrier for the Decoding Reader

--- "thirty to 40 percentage of children in the fourth grade do non get fluent readers with adequate comprehension ... One near invisible issue ... is the fate of young elementary students who read accurately (the basic goal in well-nigh reading inquiry) just not fluently in grades 3 and 4." (Wolf, pp 135)

--- "Reasons ...lend themselves to diagnosis: such equally, a poor environment, a poor vocabulary, and instruction not matched to their needs. Some of these children become capable decoding readers, but they never read rapidly plenty to comprehend what they read." (Wolf, pp 136)

(see Stages of Literacy Development for further discussion.)

Phase four: The Fluent, Comprehending Reader (typically between nine - xv years old)(back to top)

By this phase, reading is used to learn new ideas in order to gain new knowledge, to experience new feelings, to larn new attitudes, and to explore bug from i or more than perspectives. Reading includes the written report of textbooks, reference works, trade books, newspapers, and magazines that contain new ideas and values, unfamiliar vocabulary and syntax. There is a systematic report of give-and-take significant, and learners are guided to react to texts through discussions, answering questions, generating questions, writing, and more. At beginning of Stage 4, listening comprehension of the aforementioned fabric is still more effective than reading comprehension. By the end of Stage 4, reading and listening are about equal for those who read very well, reading may exist more than efficient.

"The reader at the phase of fluent comprehending reading builds up collections of knowledge and is poised to learn from every source." (Wolf, pp 136)

"At this fourth dimension teachers and parents can be lulled by fluent-sounding reading into thinking that a child understands all the words he or she is reading." (Wolf, p 136)

"Fifty-fifty when a reader comprehends the facts of the content, the goal at this stage is deeper: an increased capacity to utilize an understanding of the varied uses of words - irony, vocalisation, metaphor, and point of view - to go beneath the surface of the text." (Wolf, pp 137)

"The earth of fantasy presents a conceptually perfect holding environment for children who are just leaving the more than concrete stages of cognitive processing. One of the nigh powerful moments in the reading life ... occurs every bit fluent, comprehending readers learn to enter into the lives of imagined heroes and heroines." (Wolf pp 138)

"Comprehension processes grow impressively in such places every bit these, where children learn to connect prior noesis, predict dire or good consequences ... interpret how each new inkling, revelation, or added piece of knowledge changes what they know." (Wolf, pp 138)

"The reading expert Richard Vacca describes the shift as a evolution from 'fluent decoders' to 'strategic readers' - 'readers who know how to actuate prior knowledge earlier, during and after reading, to decide what's of import in a text, to synthesise information, to draw inferences during and afterward reading, to ask questions, and to self-monitor and repair faulty comprehension." (Wolf, pp 138)

"I well-known educational psychologist, Michael Pressley, contends that the ii greatest aids to fluent comprehension are explicit instruction past a kid's teachers in major content areas and the child's own desire to read. Engaging in dialogue with their teachers helps students ask themselves critical questions that get to the essence of what they are reading." (Wolf, pp 139)

"Van den Broek, Tzeng, Risden, Trabasso, and Basche (2001) studied the effects of influential reading comprehension questioning on students in the fourth, 7th, and tenth grades, as well as on college undergraduates. They found that questions posed during the reading of the text aided in shifting attention to specific information for older and more proficient readers. However, it interfered with the comprehension of the quaternary- and seventh-grade students, who performed better when the questions came later on, not during, the reading. (Fisher, Frey & Hattie, 2016, p. 38)

"[This is a] period of growing autonomy and fluent comprehension. The young person'southward task in this extended fourth phase of reading development is to acquire to use reading for life -- both inside the classroom, with its growing number of content areas, and outside school, where the reading life becomes a condom environment for exploring the wildly changing thoughts and feelings of youth." (Wolf, pp 140)

(see Stages of Literacy Development for further discussion.)

Stage 5: The Expert Reader (typically from 16 years and older)(dorsum to top)

"All reading begins with attending -- in fact, several kinds of attention. When expert readers await at a discussion (like 'carry'), the first three cognitive operations are: (1) to undo from any i else is doing; (two) to movement our attention to the new focus (pulling ourselves to the text); and (iii) to spotlight the new letter of the alphabet and discussion." (Wolf, pp 145)

"William Stafford expressed the first element in these changes when he wrote how 'a quality of attending' is given to us." (Wolf, pp 156)

"How we attend to a text changes over fourth dimension equally we acquire to read ... more than discriminatingly, more than sensitively, more associatively." (Wolf, pp 156)

"Cerebral neuroscientist Marcel Only and his research team at Carnegie Mellon hypothesise that when experts make inferences while reading, there is a least a ii-stage process in the encephalon, which includes both the generation of hypotheses and their integration into the reader'due south knowledge about the text." (Wolf, pp 160)

"The caste to which expert reading changes over the course of our adult lives depends largely on what read and how we read it." (Wolf, pp 156)

By this stage, the learner is reading widely from a broad range of circuitous materials, both expository and narrative, with a diverseness of viewpoints. Learners are reading widely across the disciplines, include the concrete, biological and social sciences as well every bit the humanities, politics and current affairs. Reading comprehension is amend than listening comprehension of materials of hard content and readability. Learners are regularly asked to program writing and synthesise information into cohesive, coherent texts.

"The terminate of reading development doesn't exist; the unending story of reading moves ever forrard, leaving the middle, the tongue, the word, the author for a new place from which the 'truth breaks forth, fresh and green,' changing the encephalon and the reader every time." (Wolf, 2008, p 162)

(see Stages of Literacy Development for further word.)

References  (back to top)

  • Fisher, D., Frey, Due north., & Hattie, J. (2016). Visible learning for literacy (Grades Grand-12): Implementing the practices that work best to advance educatee learning. Chiliad Oaks, CA :Corwin Literacy

  • Humphrey, Due north. (2006). Seeing red: a study in consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

  • Krebs, V. (2010). The actual root: seeing aspects and inner experience. In Westward. Mean solar day and V. Krebs (Eds), Seeing Wittgenstein anew. (pp. 120 - 139). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Van den Broek, P., Tzeng, Y., Risden, Chiliad., Trabasso, T., and Basche, P. (2001) Inferential questioning: Furnishings on comprehension of narrative texts as a function of grade and timing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(iii), 521-529.

  • Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Culture and value. Translated by Peter Winch. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

  • Wolf, M. (2008). Proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading encephalon. Cambridge: Icon Books.