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Stages of Reading Development – In Sequence
Confident reading with comprehension is the culmination of a learn-to-read journey that requires mastery of the sequential stages of reading development, language, and cognitive processes to build an essential reading foundation.
If any skill along the way does not fully develop, reading proficiency is compromised.
Parents should look out for shortcuts, detours, or workarounds that indicate their child is having difficulty with a step that should be addressed. For instance, skipping or memorizing words instead of sounding them out properly.
The end goal is for reading to be as effortless as listening. In each of the 7 stages of reading development, we review the skills, what can go wrong, and what you can do about it as a parent.
Reading is a Miraculous Skill
Reading connects visual-format text to our auditory word memory and knowledge. High school-level reading with comprehension includes thinking critically about the text while reading, at lightning speed.
Many skills must work in tandem for reading proficiency, including visual processing, language processing, working memory, and attention. It is a miraculous human achievement, especially given that there is no natural “reading” region in the brain. Every child’s brain figures out how to read on its own.
Long View – Lifelong Love of Reading
Take a long view of reading success and keep a positive connection to reading, even when your child is pushing back.
Also, ensure each step is truly mastered; for example, that your child decodes words on the page from left to right, sound by sound. Don’t pressure comprehension when decoding isn’t fluent. That encourages your child to use workarounds that ultimately delay reading proficiency.
There are no shortcuts. Reading success is achieved through the 7 stages of reading development outlined below. If there’s a delay, consider an intervention like the Gemm Learning reading program to kick-start the reading journey.
Stages of Reading Development
Step #1: Cognitive, Pre-Reading Skills
It starts with being able to process language at natural language speed so that you can pick out the sounds inside words – phonemic awareness for phonics.
Most children with reading delays due to language processing delays do not have speech delays, but most do struggle with rhyming at 3 years of age. Rhyming requires being able to pick out and play with the ending sound of words. If rhyming is an issue early on, your child is at risk of being an at-risk reader.
If language processing makes words muddy, other language skills are not challenged or practiced, including the so-called “learning MAPS” (working Memory, Attention, Processing, and Sequencing).
Sensory processing, the ability of different brain parts to work in sync, is also important for reading — visual input maps to auditory word memory to extract meaning, all almost instantaneously, at 25 milliseconds per syllable, to be exact.
Just as reading skills are learned sequentially, so is language. Here is how language processing skills develop.
How Parents Can Help
Language processing and related skills are best developed through spoken-language interaction. This means lots of adult conversation and reading to your child as often as possible. Balance and coordination exercises, as well as sports, can help with sensory processing.
If phonics or cognitive skills lag— often easier to recognize outside reading—treatments can accelerate development. These include listening therapies for pre-K children and pre-phonics skills training using Fast ForWord (provided by Gemm Learning) for school-age children. For sensory processing delays, consider Occupational Therapy or programs like Interactive Metronome.
Step #2: Phonemic Awareness
A good reader can read left to right, taking in words as they come – just like listening. This requires the entire language to be mapped by the brain, from auditory to written. This requires perfect phonemic awareness, picking out the sounds (phonemes) inside words and associating them with letters.
Phonemic awareness predicts reading success. At first, it needs to be accurate so that every word read can be mapped perfectly. Then needs to be automatic, effortless – just like listening.
If phonemic awareness is not automatic, your child will need to concentrate on each word, making reading frustrating and exhausting. Phonemic awareness is arguably the most critical stage of reading development.
How Parents Can Help
Reading help for Kindergarten and 1st graders is less about teaching and more about introducing a child to reading in a positive way that lasts a lifetime. And so it’s important not to jump ahead (to comprehension) unless your child is already reading with automaticity.
Rhyming games are great for developing phonemic awareness– this includes writing limericks and poems. Many online resources also offer suggestions for phonemic awareness games.
Phonemic awareness requires sound auditory processing skills. If you suspect difficulty, you should seek out an intervention like Gemm Learning, as until these early glitches are resolved, reading progress will be at best slow and, at worst, tortured.
Step #3: Phonics, Spelling, Syntax and Sight Words
Phonics, starting and ending syllables, and blends will come easily if phonemic awareness is in place.
This makes phonetic spelling straightforward.
But many words are not phonetic. Before a child can read fluently, sight words need to be memorized. These so-called red words, like “what” and “because,” are irregular, meaning they cannot be spelled phonetically, and so there is no choice but to simply memorize them.
Spelling is crucial to reading. In the end, every word becomes a sight word that is instantly recognized.
The brain achieves this amazing feat using spelling patterns called “word sense.” Spelling requires mastering phonetically regular words (84% of all words) first and then learning spelling rules and exceptions.
Knowledge of language structure is similarly absorbed if processing is automatic. Language syntax, semantics, and pragmatics skills are preconditions of reading comprehension.
Step #4: Decoding With Automaticity
Most parents notice a reading issue at this step. If a child needs to concentrate on decoding, it’s slow and labored. The best test of automaticity is reading fluency, where your child reads with prosody—rhythm, tone, and emphasis to convey meaning.
If decoding is not automatic, there’s less brain capacity for thinking about what is being read.
Many 3rd— and 4th-graders have difficulty with reading comprehension because they do not decode automatically. Their need to concentrate on decoding detracts from their efforts to comprehend what they read.
Reading with automaticity is only possible when the prior steps are mastered: phonemic awareness and a grasp of the language’s vocabulary and syntax.
What Parents Can Do
Pro Tip: A little spelling test is one way to check if your child is decoding properly. If your child can spell phonetic words like |open| but does less well on non-phonetic so-called “red words” like |you|, she is on track.
If your child scores similarly on both types of words, your child is probably memorizing, not sounding out phonetically – that’s a problem.
If the fundamentals of reading development are not in place in the early stages, it’s time to alert the school and consider bringing in extra reading help at home.
Step #5: Language Knowledge
Dr. G Reid Lyon, a professor at SMU, is a thought leader on the stages of reading development. He emphasizes language knowledge, specifically syntax and vocabulary, in reading comprehension. If a child does not understand the nuances of language, comprehension is compromised.
Language knowledge accumulates through active listening and reading. The ability to observe, analyze, and think while listening and reading vastly accelerates the building of this knowledge.
Children who lack the language processing efficiency required to think while reading and listening will require more direct instruction, particularly on sentence syntax—such as the use of pronouns, tenses, and other grammatical elements.
What Parents Can Do
The first step in Gemm Learning reading interventions is to resolve any language processing delay that is impeding the absorption of language through listening.
If there is no language processing delay, consider adding more language to your child’s day. Use interesting vocabulary whenever possible and play games such as Scrabble, which will expose your child to words in a fun and positive way.
Step #6: Reading Comprehension
Many parents will be surprised to see literal reading comprehension at this late stage of reading development. Focusing on reading comprehension too early can be detrimental, as it pressures children into taking shortcuts that may work in 2nd and 3rd grade but ultimately require a reading reset later on.
Reading comprehension covers literal reading comprehension, making inferences, and connecting to prior knowledge. It can only develop once the act of reading (decoding) is completely subconscious, freeing the mind for comprehension.
If decoding is not automatic, your child will find workarounds. The workaround you want to avoid is memorization, i.e., trying to memorize the meaning of every text word without connecting it to auditory memory. It’s like learning a whole new language, English in text format.
Memorization falls apart in 4th grade as the word list expands. Then the student will have to return to learning how to decode words one syllable at a time.
What Parents Can Do
If reading comprehension is not developing as expected, be sure your child is reading with automaticity. Delays in reading comprehension and executive function are also connected.
Beyond those issues, reading comprehension requires practice. Ensure your child always has books that interest them and are in their unique reading range. More on “just right” books and “reading zones” here.
Step #7: Reading Comprehension With Metacognition
Metacognitive strategies are active, lean-forward reading strategies where the reader self-adjusts while reading. Do I understand this? Does this fit with my prior knowledge? Do I need to slow down or re-read this?
College-ready reading, usually achieved by the end of 10th grade, requires two elements beyond literal reading comprehension:
- Active, engaged reading, not passive and uninterested.
- Knowledge and a lively, curious, and creative mind.
What Parents Can Do
Metacognitive strategies require a considerable amount of practice. It requires active engagement with reading that is beyond parental influence — it’s very much a function of a student’s emotional connection to reading.
Final Thoughts
Without the motivation to read, your child will not put in the reading-practice miles required to master decoding and then to learn metacognition. And so, while we are big fans of early intervention for struggling readers — it’s what we do — we would counsel patience early on.
Patience early on means prioritizing the early stages of reading development, when the foundation is laid. And it means protecting your child from pressures from his school if the reading fundamentals are not quite in place.
Turning your child off reading is always a risk. A negative relationship with reading is hard to turn around.
Gemm Learning provides a comprehensive reading program, starting with language processing and phonics, going through to high school-level reading comprehension and thinking while reading. Request a demo or call 877.914.4366 to find out if we can help.
