Brenda Geier K-12 Reading Specialist - The research tells us that with the support of parents, caregivers, and early childhood educators, as well as exposure to a literacy-rich environment, children progress from emergent to conventional reading. By interacting through reading aloud and conversation, children are exposed to learning early. It is very important to read aloud to children and provide opportunities for them to talk about the stories that they hear. As Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson (1985) state, “The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children, especially during the preschool years”. It helps them develop oral language, cognitive skills, and concepts of print and phonemic awareness.

Children read to develop background knowledge about a range of topics and build a large vocabulary, which aids them in later comprehension and development of reading strategies. They also watch how others read and therefore become familiar with the reading process. They are constantly learning.

Still, many enter elementary school without a strong background in literacy. These are the children who are most at risk of developing reading problems. To provide high chances of success, teachers should be involved in professional development to learn more about child development as it relates to literacy acquisition.

At age 3-4, children begin to “read” their favorite books by themselves. They begin to use “mock handwriting” (Clay, 1975). Around age 5, in kindergarten, most children are considered emergent readers. They make rapid growth in literacy skills if they are exposed to literacy-rich environments (Burns, Griffin, & Snow, 1999). Children may try to recall what has been written or use a picture created with the text to reread instead of using the letter clues (Kamberelis & Sulzby, 1988; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Although they are beginning to apply phonetic knowledge to create invented spellings, there is a lapse in time before they use phonetic clues to read what they write.

For those parents who choose to home-school their children, an enormous advantage exists to teach children phonetic knowledge, sight words and decoding before they enter school. This learning advantage gives them power with text that most will not be equipped with.

Most children will become early readers during the first grade. They commonly look at beginning and ending letters in order to decode unfamiliar words (Clay, 1991; Pinnell, 1996b; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). They know a small number of sight words.

By second grade, they are transitional readers, able to read unknown text with more independence. They use meaning, grammatical, and letter cues more fully and use pictures in a limited way while reading (Clay, 1991; International Reading Association & National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1998; Pinnell, 1996b; Snow, burns, & Griffin, 1998). Transitional spellers can apply spelling rules, patterns, and other strategies to put words on paper.

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