What are the critical early concepts and skills that beginning/young readers must acquire?

The teaching of reading

What do we need to know?

¦ Children learn to read well if they are encouraged to use a variety of skills, process and behaviours, rather than a particular method or approach.

¦ When children are learning to read they should be given materials that have been carefully crafted to meet their needs; books that give them, from their earliest experiences with the printed word, success, enjoyment and understanding.

Beginning Readers

Beginning/young readers rely on language and meaning as they read simple texts with only one or two lines of print.

They are just beginning to control early behaviours such as matching spoken words one by one with written words on the page, to recognising how print is arranged on pages, and the moving of left to right in reading.

Beginning/young readers are just figuring out what a word really is, how letters go together, and how letters are different from each other.

They may know a few high-frequency words that can be used as anchors as they learn to focus their attention on specific aspects of print.

As they read they notice aspects of print such as first letters of words, and they begin to pay closer attention to letters and sounds.

What are the first reading concepts and skills to be learned?

1. Book handling skills – holding the book the right way up; finding the front; turning pages one at a time in correct sequence

2. Learning to understand the technical vocabulary of reading – cover, page, front, back, first, last, left, right, top, bottom, line, beginning, letter, word, sentence, space, capital letter, full stop, question mark, sound.

3. Directionality – starting top left and moving along the line from left to right; making a return sweep to the beginning of the next line

4. Knowing that reading means focusing on print

5. Looking for meaning, expecting words to match pictures

6. Mastering a growing number of high frequency words in context: A, a, am, and, are, at, big, come, Dad, down, go, going, Here, here, I, in, is, look, little, me, Mom, my, on, said, see, The, the, to, up, we, went

7. Learning sounds as well as letter names

8. Linking the first spoken sound in a word to the first written letter in a word and to continue to link letters with sounds

9. One-to-one matching of spoken and printed words

10. Recognising even more high frequency words: are, blue, can, for, he, goes, I'm, into, it, like, play, red, she, some, this, too, way, where, you

11. Becoming confident with a few sentence constructions: Here is a . . . Here is the . . . Here comes . . . Come here . . . Look at . . . I am . . . ing Where is . . . I can see . . . in the . . . said the . . . We went . . . We are going to . . .

12. Paying close attention to print: small variations (an extra word, a changed construction, a change in layout) to discourage reading from memory alone

13. Knowing that the print carries the message and that print is constant - for example, that Mom is always Mom; and Mother is always Mother

14. Noticing 's' at the end of words

15. Learning to stop at full stops and feel the impact of meaning

16. Using stress and intonation to emphasise meaning

Next: Supporting Young Readers: What are the practical, instructional strategies; teachers and parents can use to ensure success in beginning text reading?

Darnell Winn is Education Officer, Reading & Reading Recovery Teacher Leader for the Ministry of Education. She has been an teacher and reading specialist for 28 years. Literacy Matters will appear on the first Monday of every month in Lifestyle throughout the school year.