In a given child, sometimes reading skills will outpace writing skills, or writing skills outpace reading skills, but both will follow a similar path and each skill can be used to assist learning of the other. Specific learning disabilities (to be discussed later) can, however, impact one (either reading or writing) more heavily than the other.
The U.S. Department of Education and the National Reading Panel (2000) have described a research based sequence of typical reading development that begins at home, and moves through preschool to about grade three, when a child begins to transition from learning to read, to reading to learn. Although children progress through these stages at different speeds and show strengths and weaknesses in differing areas, most will move through these stages in this order. For convenience, brief descriptions of the concurrent stage of writing
development are included.
Age 3-4 through PreK: Developing Print concepts. Children learn that print has meaning and that meaning does not change with successive readings. They learn print directionality. In English, this means that books are read from front (left) to back (right) and that print is read from left to right, and top to bottom. They learn that pictures are related to print.
During this period, the child’s language concepts are also developing. Chief among these is phonological awareness, the awareness of all the sound aspects of spoken language. Most critical for the later development of reading is phonemic awareness, the awareness that spoken words are made up of discrete sounds uttered in a specific order.
This stage’s progress is largely determined by whether parents read to their children. Parents generally begin to read to their children when they are between 4 to 8 months old. Significant in the parental reading to a child is the recognition that the print does not change, thus the story does not change. Children begin to mimic the story or “read along” with the parents around 8 months of age. At times the child may even hold the book upside down and repeat the story the parent/guardian has read to them. This shared reading aids a child to recognize letters at an earlier age.
In addition, when children scribble write or use invented spelling during their preschool years, they reveal themselves as detectives of the written word, having watched parents make lists, write thank-you notes, or leave messages. Children show an understanding that print contains a message and they often draw-write
to send a message. They may not be able to write many letters, but will begin to draw shapes that resemble letters or use a few known letters (or approximations of letters) in their “writing.” This view of the reader/writer assumes that all children have a drive to make meaning out of print and will begin doing it almost on their own if surrounded by a print-rich environment.
Kindergarten-First Grade: Beginning alphabetic concepts. Children learn to manipulate phonemes, or sounds, in words by deleting, adding, or substituting sounds in individual words, and blending those sounds into new words orally. They also begin to understand the alphabetic principle that letters stand for sounds and that words have correct spellings. They can recognize and name most letters of the alphabet and they begin to identify the most common sounds of most letters.
At this stage, they can also recognize high frequency sight words and can begin to decode simple texts. They can make predictions about what is read to them and ask and answer questions about what they read. Writing at this stage shows the child’s emerging understanding of the alphabetic principle and phonics. Writers use very simple oral language structures and use at least some real letters. They may get only the first or first and last letter/sound or only the most noticeable sound(s) in a word when writing. They begin to show an understanding of the one to one correspondence between words in speech and words on the page (i.e., there are spaces between their “words.”).
Second: Expanded phonics knowledge and decoding. The child’s knowledge of phonics, the sound letter code, improves and he/she can decode both one and two syllable words, and use context (both syntactic and semantic) cues to help decode unfamiliar words. The child can sequence events in a simple story, make brief oral summaries of material read, and begins to understand story elements and main ideas.
The child’s writing shows the growing understanding of phonics, and invented spelling becomes more phonetic. Some frequently used words will be spelled correctly. When writing about topics which interest them and with which they have a rich background of information, students can use basic sentence structures with some variation in beginnings, and may begin to try to use “cool” words they encounter in reading or listening. Students begin to attempt to use punctuation and capitalization correctly.
Third Grade: Transition to reading to Learn. Up to this point, children have been engaged in learning to read, in acquiring the many skills necessary to construct meaning from print, and to encode their own ideas in print through writing. Sometime during third grade, children typically acquire sufficient reading ability to use that ability to learn other information from content area texts. The opening page of the Georgia Performance Standards Frameworks for Reading describes this stage:
“Third graders are making the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. They read much more widely on a variety of topics. The third-grade students increase their abilities to read aloud with fluency and comprehension. Third graders read more thoughtfully, discover more details, extract deeper meaning in what they read, and read more complex texts. They enjoy a variety of genres, including fiction and non-fiction texts and poetry.
Third graders are more able to work independently on research projects, making their writing more sophisticated and meaningful. With some guidance, they use all aspects of the writing process in producing their own compositions and reports. They are much more adept at summarizing main points from fiction and
non-fiction texts, and they use more abstract skills of synthesis and evaluation in writing.
By the end of the third grade, students are aware of the importance of the conventions of language. Third graders understand the importance of spelling and the importance of correct language.
Third-grade responses to questions are more logically developed as students show evidence of expanding language with increased vocabulary and a wider range of language structures. Third graders are aware of the many registers of language, and they become flexible in their ability to vary language patterns in both speaking and writing. These students are ready to engage in abstract discussions as they respond to text and to life experiences.”
Writers at this stage are able to group sentences together by topic into paragraphs and write in a variety of forms (e.g., informational text, reports, poetry, and stories).
Throughout these stages in the development of reading and writing skills, there are a number of critical areas to consider when planning how to help children move through these stages and become proficient readers and writers. In 2000, the National Reading Panel released its now well-known report on teaching children to read. In a way, this report slightly put to rest the debate between phonics and whole language. It argued, essentially, that word-letter recognition was as important as understanding what the text means. The report’s “big 5” critical areas of reading instruction are as follows:
Phonemic Awareness: This is the understanding that words are composed of tiny, individual sounds (phonemes) which must be blended together to make each word. It is the acknowledgement of sounds and words (for example, a child’s realization that some words rhyme). Onset and rhyme are two of the skills that might help students learn that the first sound (‘buh’) in the word “bad” can be changed to the sound “duh” to make it “dad.” The key in phonemic awareness is that when you teach it to children, it can be taught with the students’ eyes closed.
In other words, it’s all about sounds, not about ascribing written letters to sounds. Phonics: As opposed to phonemic awareness, the study of phonics must be done with the eyes open. It is the connection between the sounds and letters on a page. In other words, students who are learning phonics might see the word “bad” and sound each letter out slowly until they recognize that they just said the word.
Comprehension: Comprehension simply means that the reader can ascribe meaning to text. Even though students may be good with phonics and even know what many words on a page mean, some of them are not good with comprehension because they do not know the strategies that would help them to comprehend. For example, students should know that stories often have structures (beginning, middle, and end). They should also know that when they are reading something and it does not make sense, they will need to employ “fixup”
strategies where they go back into the text they have just read and look for clues. Teachers can use many strategies to teach comprehension, including questioning, asking students to paraphrase or summarize, utilizing graphic organizers, and focusing on mental images.
Fluency: Fluency is the ability to read in much the same manner as speaking, with fluidity and smoothness. Students who are fluent readers are more likely to be successful with comprehension, as they are less focused on individual words and more focused on what is actually being read.
Vocabulary: Vocabulary demonstrates the strong ties between oral and written language. Students who are learning to read are just beginning to realize the link between the words they say and the words they read. Increasing vocabulary whether by listening to others, reading to themselves, or being read to—will help
students with both comprehension and fluency.
Methods used to teach these skills are often featured in a “balanced literacy” curriculum that focuses on the use of skills in various instructional contexts. For example, with independent reading, students independently choose books that are at their reading levels; with guided reading, teachers work with small groups of students to help them with their particular reading problems. With whole group reading, the entire class reads the same text, and the teacher incorporates activities to help students learn phonics, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. In addition to these components of balanced literacy, teachers incorporate writing so that students can learn the structures of communicating through text.
Read More : Sequence of Reading and Writing Development
