Early Childhood Literacy Development

1. READING DEVELOPMENT STAGES

2. Emergent Reading

2.1. Children who are at this stage:

2.2. - are aware of print in their environment (home, classroom, etc.)

2.3. - can pretend to read

2.4. - can retell stories using pictorial clues and patterns

2.5. - are steadily increasing their alphabetic and sight word knowledge

3. Beginning Reading

3.1. Children who are at this stage:

3.2. - understand the concept of words

3.3. - have a decent-sized bank of sight words memorized

3.4. - use their phonemic knowledge to decode words

3.5. - use cueing systems and reading strategies while reading on their own

3.6. - can follow words by pointing to them during reading slowly

4. Fluent Reading

4.1. Children who are at this stage:

4.2. - have a sight word memory bank of 100-300

4.3. - can read independently,, silently, quickly (100 words per minute), and effectively (using strategies and phonological knowledge)

4.4. - can change their voice to match the story and/or it's characters' dialogue

4.5. - can master higher levels of comprehending texts (such as making inferences)

5. Emergent Writing

5.1. Children who are at this stage:

5.2. - understand the concepts of writing and drawing, and can identify whether a work sample is one or the other

5.3. - understand how print concepts (directionality, for example) affects their writing

5.4. - needs tools to assist with independent writing (sentence frames, 'Space Man' spacers to space out words, etc.)

5.5. - can write their name

5.6. - start to write scribbles, letter-like forms, and/or scribbles randomly over the page

6. Beginning Writing

6.1. Children who are at this stage:

6.2. - can write multiple sentences

6.3. - has a memory bank that allows them to automatically write at least 20 spelling words

6.4. - understand and correctly use punctuation marks (only at the end of sentences)

6.5. - can use their knowledge of phonics to spell out many words they don't know by heart

6.6. - can write all the letters (upper- and lowercase)

7. Fluent Writing

7.1. Children who are at this stage:

7.2. - can revise their writing

7.3. - can spell many words (100+) by memory

7.4. - use more advanced vocabulary

7.5. - use advanced punctuation correctly

7.6. - can write more than one paragraph with indents

8. WRITING DEVELOPMENT STAGES