Foundational Skills Timeline

Cooking Times

"Typical" StagEs of reading

04

02

Grade Two: consolidated alphabetic

Kindergarten: Partial Alphabetic

03

01

Grade One: Full alphabetic

Pre-K: Pre-alphabetic

Reading Rockets. “Typical Reading Development | Reading Rockets.” Www.readingrockets.org, 2024, www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/how-children-learn-read/typical-reading-development.

Cooking Times

"Typical" StagEs of reading

06

grades: three and four

07

middle and high school

Reading Rockets. “Typical Reading Development | Reading Rockets.” Www.readingrockets.org, 2024, www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/how-children-learn-read/typical-reading-development.

Skills:

• Decoding Skills:
• Typical readers can decode a wide range of one-syllable, phonetically regular words, including:
• Closed syllables (e.g., man, fish, block, stamp)
• Silent e (e.g., like, same, spoke)
• Open syllables (e.g., no, go, be, cry, by)
• Vowel r (e.g., car, star, her, shirt)
• Vowel combinations (e.g., tree, stay, broom)
• Automatic Word Recognition:
• Some common words are recognized automatically, no need todecode (i.e., "sounding out").
• Learners may still need to apply decoding strategies to many words (longer/less common words)
• Full Alphabetic Stage:
• This phase is called full alphabetic (Ehri, 2005), where children typically attend to all phonetic cues in a word.
• Spelling and Context Dependence:
• Spelling Development:
• Misspellings become more recognizable, as children attempt to represent all sounds in a word (e.g., garbij for garbage).
• Oral vs. Reading Comprehension:
• Oral language comprehension still exceeds reading comprehension at this stage due to limited word-recognition skills.

• Pre-alphabetic stage: Many young children do not yet understand the alphabetic principle and do not grasp that printed words need to be "decoded" by recognizing letters and patterns. Example: A four-year-old may recognize the word stop on a stop sign because of its shape but not on an index card.
• Print concepts: Some preschoolers, particularly those ages 3 to 5, may recognize letters in their names and understand basic print concepts, such as identifying the front and back of a book, and knowing that it’s the print, not the pictures, that is read.
• Phonological awareness: At this stage, children often have basic phonological awareness, like the ability to rhyme or enjoy tongue-twisters.
• Exposure to literacy: Frequent exposure to literacy, such as read-alouds by parents or teachers, can help children at this stage develop these skills more effectively.

Skills

• Letter recognition: Typical children can recognize all or nearly all letters (upper and lower case).
• Letter sounds: They can name letters and provide sounds for them, especially consonants.
• Short vowel sounds: They may know some short vowel sounds, particularly if taught in the curriculum.
• Decoding CVC words: Children may begin decoding simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, like man, sit, hop, if explicitly taught.

Partial Alphabetic Stage:

• Limited letter pattern knowledge: They may lack knowledge of common letter patterns (e.g., ar, ee, oo, oa, igh, tch).
• Word confusion: Children may confuse similarly spelled words, such as boat/boot or meet/met. Decoding reliance: They often rely on the first and last letters of a word, instead of decoding all letters.
• Partial alphabetic term: because children rely on partial phonics cues.

Oral language vs. reading comprehension: Children’s oral language comprehension is much stronger than their reading comprehension because of limited word recognition skills.

Skills:

• Decoding Skills:
• Long Words: Children can increasingly decode unfamiliar long words, including:
• Consonant-le words (e.g., stable, marble, needle).
• Phonetically regular two-syllable words (e.g., basement, invite, mistake).
• Some multi-syllable words (especially those in their oral vocabularies, e.g., butterfly, potato, remember).
• Consolidated Alphabetic Stage:
• Letter Patterns: Children begin to consolidate common letter patterns (e.g., prefixes, suffixes) to enhance word reading efficiency.
• This helps make reading more automatic and faster.
• Fluency Development: This stage marks rapid fluency development in reading texts, typically continuing into Grade 3.

Spelling and Word Recognition:

• Improved Spelling: Children’s growing knowledge of common letter patterns is reflected in their improved spelling of words.

Decoding Skills:

• Mastered Basic Word Decoding: By the end of Grade 3, typical readers have largely mastered:
• Basic word decoding skills, including decoding most multisyllabic words.
• They can quickly and easily decode most unfamiliar words.
• Most common words are recognized automatically (by sight).
• Reading Fluency: Typical readers have well-established reading fluency in grade-appropriate texts. This includes the ability to read quickly, easily, and accurately.

Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Development:

• Escalating Demands: The comprehension and vocabulary demands of school texts increase substantially in Grades 3 and 4.
• Vocabulary and morphemic knowledge become crucial for reading comprehension and spelling.

• Morphemic Knowledge: Understanding common morphemes (e.g., geo = earth, astro = star) helps children:
• Infer meanings of related words (e.g., geology, astronomy).
• Spelling of morphemes is stable, so this knowledge supports spelling and vocabulary development.

Comprehension Strategies:

• Reading Strategies:
• Summarization, questioning, and inferencing are used to aid comprehension.
• “Fix-up” strategies when comprehension fails: Rereading, looking up word in dictionary, asking for clarification, activating prior knowledge, etc...)

• Purpose-Based Reading:
• Vary reading approach based on the purpose (e.g., studying vs. reading for pleasure). If the topic is unfamiliar or difficult, they read more carefully.

Text Structure Awareness:

• Sensitivity to Text Structure:
• Students recognize differences between fiction and non-fiction texts.
• Knowledge of text structure aids comprehension:
• In informational texts, the key idea of a paragraph is often in the first or last sentence.
• Headings and subheadings highlight important ideas.

Development of Comprehension:

• Shift in Mental Resources: By Grades 3 and 4, students are typically skilled decoders, so they can focus more on comprehension

• Narrowing of Comprehension Gap: The gap between oral language comprehension and reading comprehension begins to narrow.
• Limitations in reading comprehension are more related to:
• Vocabulary.
• Background knowledge.
• Oral language comprehension, rather than word reading.

Reading in Content Areas:

• Reading as a Tool: Reading is increasingly used in a wide variety of content area subjects (e.g., science, social studies, history).
• Comprehension Development:
• Comprehension strategies and reading speed continue to develop.
• Students are developing higher-order comprehension abilities, such as:
• Integrating information from different sources.
• Reconciling differences in viewpoints across texts.
• Appreciating literary symbolism and themes.

Oral Language vs. Reading Comprehension:

• Oral vs. Reading Comprehension (Biemiller, 1999):
• Oral language comprehension and reading comprehension do not become fully comparable until Grades 7 or 8.
• Adolescents and adults may have higher reading comprehension than oral comprehension, especially with complex narratives or dense informational texts (e.g., science topics like DNA).
• Oral language remains important for learning, particularly for students with reading problems (e.g., students with dyslexia).

Reading as a Source of Vocabulary and Knowledge:

• Vocabulary and Background Knowledge:
• For typical students (especially avid readers), reading becomes an increasingly important source of new vocabulary and background knowledge.
• Unusual words are encountered more frequently in text than in spoken language, even in the conversations of college-educated adults.
• Skilled vs. Poor Readers:
• Skilled readers are exposed to more unusual words and new background knowledge because they read much more than poor readers.
• Reading volume between good and poor readers differs greatly, contributing to disparities in language skills and achievement.

Impact of Reading Volume:

• Reading Volume Differences:
• Cunningham and Stanovich (1998): 5th graders at the 90th percentile of reading achievement read as much in 2 days of pleasure reading as students at the 10th percentile read in an entire year.
• Impact on Achievement:
• Differences in reading volume contribute independently to the growth of reading and language skills.
• These differences can further widen the gap in academic achievement between good and poor readers.
• Importance of Early Intervention: The reading volume gap underscores the importance of early intervention to prevent or address reading problems, which can have long-term effects on achievement.