Stages of Development
Beginning Readers (Levels aa-C)
Readers at this level might display the following characteristics:
- Pretend to read familiar stories
- Sing their ABCs but not be able to name all of the letters in print
- Recognize and name more letters as they are exposed to print and instruction
- Identify the front cover
- Turn pages one by one
- Show how text progresses left to right, top to bottom
- Identify uppercase letters with greater ease than lowercase letters
- Know some sounds of frequently seen or previously taught letters
- Identify and produce an increasing number of sounds, particularly consonant sounds and short vowels
- Recognize environmental print in context
- Attempt to track print with their finger in books and other texts
- Begin to play with words
- Identify a rhyming pair when presented with choices (e.g., rat, bed, hat)
- Count syllables in words
- Listening comprehension far exceeds reading comprehension (the latter is limited to single words or short phrases/sentences)
Text to support readers at this level may include:
- Detailed pictures that add to the story
- Short, declarative sentences
- Repetitive patterns
- Repeated vocabulary
- Natural, familiar language
- Large print
- Wide letter spacing
- Familiar concepts
- Limited text per page
Developing Readers (Levels D-J)
Readers at this level might display the following characteristics:
- Apply their understanding of phonics for reading unfamiliar words
- Focus most of their energy on decoding, which leaves fewer cognitive resources for comprehension
- Recognize more frequently read words by sight
- Attempt to sound out unknown words, phoneme by phoneme
- Realize that their reading should make sense and will attempt to self-correct when making errors
- Look for word chunks to assist in reading
- Listening comprehension still exceeds reading comprehension, although readers begin to get meaning from text
Text to support readers at this level may include:
- Increasingly more lines of print per page
- More complex sentence structure
- Fewer repetitive patterns
- Pictures that relate to the story
- Familiar topics with more details
Effective Readers (Levels K-P)
Readers at this level might display the following characteristics:
- Attend to the phonics, word chunks, affixes when decoding unfamiliar words in their entirety, including multisyllabic and compound words
- Recognize more and more words automatically by sight
- Guess or predict what they “think” the sentence says rather than reading each word as it is written
- Glance ahead to prepare for upcoming words
- Focus less of their energy on decoding, which leaves more cognitive resources for comprehension
- Begin to transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” as they use text to learn new information
Text to support readers at this level may include:
- More pages
- Longer sentences with more complex syntax
- More text per page
- Richer vocabulary
- Greater variation in sentence pattern and exposure to a variety of text structures
- Fewer pictures
- More formal and descriptive language
Automatic Readers (Levels Q-Z2)
Readers at this level might display the following characteristics:
- Use phonics, syllable knowledge, and morphology to decode unknown multisyllabic words
- Recognize words they repeatedly see in text by sight
- Use fluency and prosodic reading at an appropriate rate
- Focus on comprehension as decoding becomes automatic
- Rely on text for directions, content knowledge, and general information
Text to support readers at this level may include:
- More text
- Less familiar, more varied topics
- Challenging vocabulary
- More complex sentences
- Varied writing styles
- Few, if any pictures
- Text features to support understanding (graphs, charts, infographics, etc.)
- Text structures (compare and contrast, cause and effect, problem/solution, sequence, descriptive)