Importance of Developmental Reading

Children go through various stages of learning, for babies they learn to walk and learn lots of
techniques or strategies before they can walk on their own. In reading perse, this pattern is the same.
Children learn to read at their own pace with the help of their experiences and the stages they undergo.

Developmental Reading is a branch of reading instruction that is designed to support literacy in a

variety of contexts to improve comprehension and decoding skills. This instructional approach helps bridge
gaps in reading skills so that students are better equipped to engage with more advanced content.

The key point here is that we encourage the love for reading and it starts even when they are not yet
talking, yes that is true and they grow up to be fund of books. In this they’ll be able to go through different
stages of reading which is continuum, which means it will keeps on going until their skills become
proficient.

Reading is not just giving meaning or associating letters to sounds but it is about exceedingly more!

Describe the stages of Reading Development

Pre-Reading / Emergent Readers

INTEREST IN READING is the First and most important stage this happens when children show an
interest in reading and they initiated to get a book. Children even at an early age need to be exposed with
different kinds of literature. The parent’s main role is to encourage this interest and develop it into a love of
books and reading.
Children at this stage will understand that the print has its meaning, they will also be familiar with
handling books, some will comment on illustrations, others will start to stare and recognize letter names
and sounds. These kids that display an interest on books will have a good grasp of oral language, they tend
to relate stories to their own experiences, sometimes you can notice them that they are pretending to read a
book and start rhyming.

Reading / Early Readers

SELF CONFIDENCE grows as they feel and act like they’re readers. Stage two of Reading
Development, shows that children become extra involved with the reading process and often you can notice
them that they are starting to memorize the story, taking lots of risks, they begin to memorize common sight
words, making connections between sounds they make and the print they are looking at, using illustrations to
tell the story, they eventually start to read for meaning or the moral of the story, and they begin to predict
unknown words using different visual cues, they begin to know the use of rhyming knowledge to add,
change and even delete phonemes to create a new word lastly they now begin to combine strategies in their
attempts to read unfamiliar texts.

Responding / Progressive Readers

SELF-CORRECTING AND READ FOR MEANING are some of the strategies they can now do or
even combine to other variety of reading strategies. In this stage, children become more articulate as they
enter into another stage of reading development. The children will understand text has meaning, they use
illustrations as part of self-monitoring, they also begin to understand how to tell a story. When these children
are continually being guided and challenged in reading almost anything they unlock and independently use
comprehension and prediction strategies and often use multiple strategies to increase their reading fluency.
Last but not the least they make educated guesses when predicting and adapting their predictions as needed.

Exploration / Transitional Readers

In this stage, children are reading more FLUENTLY and ACCURATELY but may still need help
with much more difficult words. In the course of this process kids are recognizing an increasing number of
words, have increased in comprehension and doing multiple reading strategies at the same time. Noticeable
reading with improved fluency and speed. They are able to use illustrations and text to self-monitor and
self-correct, reading unknown words using knowledge of phonemes and digraph, understanding how to read
with expression using different punctuation marks, they even choose books to learn about new subjects of
their preferred interest and also they read books as part of a series.

Applying / Independent Readers

INDEPENDENT AND CONSISTENT are the two main characters being noticed in this stage.
Children can read longer and more complex words or texts and they already choose relevant books for an
intended purpose. Along this journey of reading, the fifth stage shows that children are confident and
independent readers, they can self-monitor on a regular basis, they may also do reading different for
purposes including expanding their own interest and likes. By this stage the kids are reading longer tests,
extracting the information they need in a specific situation or instance. They are also aware that what they
read can influence their opinions and read text from different points of view.