Reading levels for 6 year olds

Which reading stage is your child in?

Learning to read fluently is a process that can take several years to complete. Children progress through four stages on the road to reading: pre-reader, beginning reader, intermediate reader, and advanced reader. While most kids learn to read between kindergarten and 2nd grade, there’s no set timetable. Some children develop the skill faster or slower than others. In this article, you'll learn more about the four reading stages and how your child will learn to unlock the meaning of letters and words to understand what's written on the page and screen.

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Learning to read is a process that can take years, and although each child learns at his own pace, most progress through four basic reading stages. Review the following descriptions to find out which stage of reading your child is in and how to help your child strengthen reading skills at each step along the way.

Signs of a Pre-Reader: Ages 2 to 4

Your child is probably a pre-reader (also called a pre-emergent reader) if he does most of the following:

Plays with books as toys but doesn't yet understand that they contain stories
Has been exposed to books and enjoys hearing them, but doesn't yet comprehend that the pages contain words that correspond to a story
Is attracted to the bright colors and illustrations found in books, but doesn't understand that the pictures depict a story
Can't identify any words or letters on the pages, though may seem interested in learning the names of letters
Pretends to write with a pencil or pen
Enjoys looking through books and magazines on his own

Most preschoolers are in the pre-reading stage.

How to help: Share books and more books with your child. Best bets are those that feature rhyming and word patterns, vivid illustrations, and stories you loved as a child. For more suggestions on what to read, see BabyCenter's advice on choosing books for your pre-reader.

Signs of a Beginning Reader: Ages 4 to 6

Your child is probably a beginning reader (also known as an emerging reader) if she does most of the following:

Needs pictures on each page to help tell the story
Can name the letters in the alphabet and knows many of the letter sounds
Memorizes books and tries to read them again and again
Reads aloud unexpressively and doesn't stop for punctuation
Comes across an unknown word and is able to sound out the beginning, but then makes up the rest or skips over it

Many kindergartners can be at this level of reading, with one of their key skills being the ability to distinguish between the sounds letters make. Having this "ear" for letters will help kids accelerate their path to reading.

How to help: Reading along with your preschooler can be a huge boost to their reading progress. Talking to your child about the pictures, pointing to words as you read them, and reading everywhere you go (road signs, store signs, etc.) are just a few of the ways to help your beginning reader move to the next level.

Signs of an Intermediate Reader: Ages 6 to 8

Your child is probably an intermediate reader (also known as a developing reader) if he does most of the following:

Reads smoothly most of the time with few mistakes, but sometimes stops to sound out words
Uses pictures as well as context clues from the rest of the sentence to figure out the meaning of a story
Comes across an unknown word, sounds it out, and can usually figure out the meaning based on context
Can answer simple questions about the story
Reads aloud expressively sometimes and pauses for most punctuation
Enjoys new books, reading easier ones independently and more difficult ones with the help of an older child or adult

By the time many children enter 1st grade (usually between 6 and 7 years old), they're able to "decode" what they see on the page. Children in the intermediate stage of reading can pair letters with sounds and match up spoken words with their written counterparts.

How to help: At this stage, the most important thing you can do is give your budding reader freedom to blossom. Allow your child to pick out their own books, read on their own, and read no anywhere they want (within reason). Children in the intermediate reading stage need as much independent reading practice as they can get. The best way to encourage more reading is to let them read whatever they want so they enjoy it. Above all, skip making reading an "assignment." For more advice on how to unleash your child's inner bookworm, see tips on helping your intermediate reader become a fluent reader.

Signs of an Advanced Reader: Age 8 and up

Your child is probably an advanced reader (also known as a fluent reader) if she does most of the following:

Reads smoothly with few, if any, breaks
Reads chapter books and can fully comprehend most or all of the story
Enjoys books without pictures
Looks up an unknown word, or asks the meaning of the word and usually remembers it the next time she sees the word
Can answer questions about the material and share feelings and thoughts about the story
Reads aloud expressively throughout, with a full understanding of punctuation and rhythm

Reads chapter books and shows interest in longer, more detailed stories

Many children hit their reading stride during the 2nd grade. At this point, they no longer have to carefully sound out each word. Reading becomes more automatic and they can shift their energy to enjoying the meaning of what they're reading.

How to help: Playing to your child's learning style and sparking their creativity can help cement advanced reading skills. For physical learners, create a family newspaper or make your own bookmarks. For auditory learners, seek out story time online and off or have them read to someone (sharing a book with the grandparents or even a beloved pet can work out well). And for visual learners, create a photo scrapbook and write captions describing what is happening in the photos to reinforce associations between imagery and story. Get more tips on helping an advanced reader.

Is your child ready for reading? The HOMER app will create a personalized learn-to-read plan based on your child's skill level and interests. It's a fun, interactive reading program developed by literacy experts. BabyCenter parents get the first month free (and, depending on the program you choose, up to 4 months free).

Nancy Montgomery

Nancy Montgomery is a health and wellness writer and editor. She lives with her husband in Berkeley, California, and has an adult daughter. She especially enjoys working on safety-related content, and organizing and presenting important information in a way that's easily accessible to parents.

Help! My 6 Year Old is Struggling with Reading

The typical six-year-old is usually either in kindergarten or first grade (depending on their birthday and district mandates). Reading skills at age six can vary wildly—some children are proficient readers, others are working on sight words and early literacy skills. For this reason, some parents wonder if their 6 year old is struggling with reading.

If you are lying in bed at night fretting that “my 6 year old is struggling with reading!” try not to stress too much. Here’s how parents may be able to better determine if a child really is struggling:

Grade-Level Benchmarks

Schools should have grading rubrics in place to help parents understand grade-level expectations. In elementary school, grades could be letters or numbers. With the number system, children are usually graded as ‘above grade level” (4), proficient/at-grade level (3), partial mastery (2) and area of concern (1). These explanations could differ per district, however. The letter system is a bit easier for parents to understand; A through F provides a bit more definition and less ambiguity for parents. A child with a C, for example, is still scoring average.

These rubrics and how a child measures provides a glimpse into subject mastery. Typically, schools will provide a progress report in the middle of a quarter to help parents better understand their child’s progress and their struggles. Scores and reports are one way that a parent can understand a child’s reading ability.

Standardized Tests

Many districts implement standardized tests in reading and math to better understand students’ progress and mastery in these subjects. These tests may be administered throughout the school year to ensure that children are progressing appropriately and meeting grade-level standards.

Parents should receive scores from these tests; typically, scores will show a percentile rank and how a child compares to peers in the same grade. These tests can vary, however, and if a child is ill, tired or simply just having a bad day, their scores could be affected.

If a child is consistently scoring low or seems to be struggling to read at home, too, parents may want to request a meeting with the teacher and discuss options or possible interventions. While a single low score may be a blip, consistently struggling on reading tests could warrant more attention.

Struggles at Home

Parents may notice struggles at home before a teacher picks up on an issue. Maybe a child fails to grasp what is read to them or has issues sounding out words. When reading with a child, any struggles should be noted.

That being said, parents should not expect children to read perfectly and without error. Reading—like all skills—takes time and practice. Yes, for some children reading comes naturally…and easily. For other children, though, reading requires nightly practice and some parent involvement.

How to Work on Reading Skills at Home

All kids should read for fun. Whether a parent reads to a child or if a child reads independently, books and stories should be encouraged for entertainment. Yet, reading also has to be a skill that is mastered so that children can read to learn.

Play Reading Games

Six-year-olds are still at the age where memorizing sight words may be part of the curriculum. Make flashcards to help children quickly identify these words. Or play sight word reading games. When reading a book or story, have children spot all the sight words for a scavenger hunt activity. Parents also can make Bingo cards and play Sight Word Bingo. Get creative to help children embrace a reading adventure!

Listen to a Book

Children can listen to an audiobook while reading or following along in a book or story. Hearing the story may help them better understand what is being read or learn to decipher difficult words. Some children are auditory learners, and listening may be a better way to absorb information.

Talk about the Story

Encourage children to read a level-appropriate book aloud. Help correct any errors they make while reading, and ask questions about the plot and characters, too. Focus on the ‘w/h’ questions of comprehension: who, what, when, where, why…and how.

Let Children Choose Their Books

Sometimes kids don’t like to read, because they simply don’t like the book or story. To encourage children to read, allow them to choose their own book. If you want to encourage independent reading, be sure to choose books on their level.

Use a Reading App

For parents who want instructional help for the child, a reading app like Readability may provide the support they need to increase their reading skills. Readability provides leveled content that advances in difficulty as a child masters each level; lessons are never too easy or too difficult. Stories offer interactive features and colorful illustrations to keep children immersed in the reading experience. Parents can track their child’s progress via the Parent Dashboard, which allows parents to view time spent on the app as well as the child’s reading level.

Parents should feel confident that an app is the right fit for their child’s individual needs, and Readability offers a seven-day free trial that allows parents and their child to explore the app’s content and features. Ready to try Readability? Sign up for a free trial today.

How much should a child read at 6 | AMAkids Academy Articles

Every year a child grows up is a new challenge for parents. The school is getting closer, so there are only more worries and questions. Parent forums and the Internet are ambiguous about whether a preschooler should be able to read. Many people worry that it will be psychologically difficult for a child if he lags behind his classmates, so they make every effort to early education. Others emphasize the freedom of their baby from any obligation and comparison: the school should teach. But the truth is always somewhere in the middle.

Should children be taught to read before school?

Reading is a complex process involving vision, hearing, speech and the human psyche. At 5-6 years old, children are most active, inquisitive and receptive to the influence of the world around them. Therefore, the ability to read is a valuable tool for the development of thinking and the formation of personality. Reading activates attention, trains memory, imagination and articulation, helps to cope with hyperactivity. Children who began to read before school are able to master more information than their peers who learned to read later. For those who do not read well in primary grades, it is more difficult to assimilate the material in the classroom and do homework. And studies show that this addiction persists and manifests itself in the future.

Most children enter the 1st grade already able to read at least syllable by syllable. But there is no law in Russia that establishes the norm when and how much a preschool child should read. There is a Federal State Educational Standard (Federal State Educational Standard), which obliges schools and kindergartens to take into account the individual characteristics of children. That is, , they will still be taught to read, and the absence of this skill does not prevent them from entering the 1st grade. However, assessment of the level of preparation is a common practice when interviewing for a school. There are even unwritten lists of what a preschooler should know and be able to do even before his first call.

In addition to mastering basic skills, children must also be prepared for learning psychologically. A child who is not used to learning, and now must, will experience stress; especially when surrounded by strangers and unfamiliar walls. The familiar home environment and close people in the role of teachers contribute to emancipation and faster progress.

Some parents think that children reading in the 1st grade will be bored and deliberately do not involve the child in reading. But in the same way, it can be argued that if children do not know anything at all, they will willingly study and show curiosity in everything. If the class is boring, then everyone will be bored.

How many words per minute you need to read at 6 years old

Take an interesting book with large print and a stopwatch. Take one minute. At the end of the time, make a mark with a pencil and count the number of words. Everyone passed this test. Someone did better than others and enjoyed reading for a while, while someone remembers reading speed control as torture. Although now there is no discipline "reading technique", but such a test is still being carried out. When enrolling in a school, this is necessary to determine the general level of development of the child. In elementary grades, such diagnostics are needed to adjust the training plan. The first official check takes place for first-graders not earlier than the second half of the year, but usually they do not grade.

School programs may differ, so the approximate reading speed for 1st grade students is 15-30 words per minute. Is it a lot or a little? And how to answer the frequent question “how many words per minute should a preschooler read”? Various surveys of parents show that by the 1st grade more than 70% of children are already reading: some of them - by syllables, at least a third - at a pace of 45 words per minute, and this is already the norm for the 2nd grade. But these indicators are incorrect and very approximate: it is impossible to evaluate the speed of text reproduction in its pure form. The teacher checking the child should focus on the following criteria:

whether he reads by syllables or reproduces the whole word;
whether he pronounces letters and sounds correctly, divides words into syllables;
observes pauses and puts accents correctly;
whether he understands what he is reading.

Therefore, when teaching a child to read at home, you should not pay attention to speed. The preschooler must learn to read at the pace of his usual speech. But even fast reading is inferior to the ability to retell the text and answer questions about it. You can prepare your child for the successful passing of "standards" by starting to train in advance. And there is no need to chase the success of other people's children.

Teaching preschoolers to read: teachers' advice

If your child already speaks fluently and correctly, builds sentences and understands what is said, you can start teaching him to read. Acquiring this skill is the key to education. But the child should take the first step into the world of great discoveries without coercion. Usually children are psychologically mature for this at the age of 5-6.

Ways to teach reading can be divided into two categories. Among the formal ones: pronunciation of letters, syllables and words, learning the alphabet and playing with words - i. e. all available methods of mastering the mechanics of reading. In informal ways (reading together, discussing books), they try to instill in children an interest in the process and the desire to master the skill on their own. This also includes methods when the child first learns about the concept of “words”, the meaning of words, and only at the end learns the alphabet. However, teachers believe that this method is not suitable for preschoolers.

The main and common thing for any approach is to stimulate interest. A child cannot be forced: he must comprehend the skill of reading with pleasure and desire. Books should be selected with a large font, simple texts, bright pictures and fascinating topics. Play is the most natural way to learn, and reading can also be learned through play. From the whole variety of alphabets, primers, cubes, books and educational toys, you can choose those that the child will love. In the outside world, letters and words are everywhere: various signs and signs are another opportunity to practice reading. But it is better to postpone learning games if the child is in a bad mood or tired.

When a young reader can easily cope with simple books on their own, teachers advise to continue reading to the child anyway. Long and complex stories are not yet available to him, but will keep him motivated to learn. You can reread familiar texts and look for famous characters in new stories. And it is especially important to set a personal example: the child must see and believe that reading is fun and interesting.

To whom to entrust teaching children to read

Whether a preschool child can read correctly and quickly depends not only on intelligence. The success of education can be influenced by the uncertainty of the baby, the lack of family education, physical disorders of the organs of perception and speech. 58% of schoolchildren learning to read have problems of a speech therapy nature - these are the data of the Ministry of Education. And when a child cannot pronounce part of the alphabet correctly, he hears other phonemes and this greatly interferes with reading.

Teachers often have to retrain children to read because of parents' mistakes. One such example is when a child names letters instead of making sounds, and therefore does not understand how to read syllables. Slow reading can also have different causes that need to be diagnosed and eliminated in a timely manner. For this, there are special centers for early education of children.

If a child has no interest in letters and reading at all, it means that a private approach to the choice of methodology is needed. Only a specialist can determine the psychological characteristics and select an individual program. Therefore, for teaching reading to preschool children, it is better to choose professional teachers and the right center.

How easy it is to teach a child 4-6 years old to read - the best methods and exercises

How to understand that it's time to read there is no ready-made answer, but we want to immediately warn against two misconceptions:

“It is not necessary to teach a child to read at home, they will teach you at school anyway. ” Yes, they will. But remember: the first year at school is the most intense in all 11 years of study. For some 4-5 months in the 1st grade, the child goes through the alphabet "from" and "to", learns to read, write, and the rest of the time he studies the basics of the Russian language. Therefore, it will be great if he has a reading skill before school. This will reduce the burden on the child.
"There is no time to waste - the sooner the baby begins to read, the better." All children are different and develop at their own pace. Therefore, you should not impose teaching reading to a preschooler as soon as he is 4-5 years old, if the student himself does not yet show interest in this activity. Instead, you can begin to develop an interest in reading through bright and engaging books. A good option would also be games that involve letters.

The indicator to be guided by is not the age of a preschooler, but his speech skills.

It's time to learn to read if…

If the speech development of a preschooler proceeds without gross violations. Let's figure out what criteria will help you find out if a child is ready to learn to read:

Understanding addressed speech. The kid must understand sentences, phrases, individual words that others around him turn to.
Vocabulary. The more words a child knows, the better he will understand what he read. It will also help him communicate with adults and other children.
Grammar. The ability to correctly build sentences, select and change words is important for children who are learning to read.
Pronunciation. For learning to be effective, the child must know how to pronounce words without gross errors.

Remember: at preschool age, a child may have minor flaws in grammar and pronunciation - this is normal. Over time, these violations will be corrected, and they should not be considered an obstacle to reading. But if the baby is not yet very confident in speaking, do not rush him to read - this will not help develop speech, but only demotivate.

Practicing child psychologist Ekaterina Murashova

Free course for modern moms and dads from Ekaterina Murashova. Sign up and participate in the drawing of 8 lessons

How to make learning to read easier for preschoolers

Praise more and never scold

It's hard for us adults to imagine how difficult it really is for a baby to learn from scratch such a complex skill as reading. After all, being able to read means being able to correlate a sound with a letter or a combination of letters, connect sounds, understand the meanings of the words read and the meaning behind the text.

If parents take the child's progress for granted and express dissatisfaction when the child does not understand something, this will not push the future student to development, but will only complicate the process. Therefore, it is important to praise for small victories: I learned the letter that was passed last time - great, I coped without my father's help with the word as much as two syllables - clever.

Do not take failures as a consequence of the negligence of a little student. When a child does not understand the first time, this is an occasion to look for another explanation or give more time to practice. If you feel tired and irritated, you should stop the activity and return to it in a good mood.
Exercise little but regularly

Do not expect perseverance and a desire to spend hours figuring out unfamiliar letters from your baby. It is difficult for preschoolers to keep their attention in a lesson for more than 25 minutes, and even such small classes should be interrupted with physical education minutes and games so that the child does not get bored. This is exactly how Skysmart prepares for school: 25-minute classes with breaks for outdoor games.

But regular practice is important - much more important than the duration of the session. And it doesn’t have to be just lessons: you can look for familiar letters on signs during a walk, on a door plate in a children’s clinic, on a package of your favorite corn flakes.
Read books aloud

In a series of studies conducted by Dr. Victoria Purcell-Gates among five-year-olds who could not yet read, those children to whom their parents read aloud regularly for two years, expressed their thoughts in more literary language, built longer phrases and used more complex syntax.

In addition, reading aloud with adults contributed to the expansion of children's vocabulary, as parents explained the meanings of new words that children did not encounter in everyday life.

Expert Opinion

According to neuroscientist Marianne Wolfe, book evenings with parents help develop a love of reading because the child establishes a connection between reading aloud and feelings of love and warmth.

Discuss read

The role of communication in teaching literacy cannot be overestimated. At first, it is important to ask if the future student is interested, if he is tired, what was remembered from the lesson. When a preschooler learns to read coherent texts, be sure to ask questions about their content.

It's great if the child reads on his own and without the prompting of the parents, but even in this case, do not deprive him of the opportunity to discuss what he has read with you. For example, you can ask:
- Which of the characters do you like?
- Do you think this character is like you? Would you like to be like her?
- What would you do if you were a hero?
- Why did the described event happen? How are these two events related?
- How did what you read make you feel?
- What do you remember most from what you read?
- What do you think the author wanted to teach? Why did he write this? Do you agree with the author?

It is important to select questions individually, based on the age of the child. With younger children, discuss everything together, ask simple questions, direct their attention to some facts. The complexity of the questions should increase in proportion to the age of the child. The older he is, the more difficult the tasks should be, and the questions can already affect the "reflection" of their feelings and experiences.

Go from simple to complex

From the correspondence between sounds and letters - to syllables, from short words - to words that are more authentic and more complicated. It would seem that this is obvious, but no: sometimes parents are so happy with the success of the child at first that they push him to study more complex topics than he is ready to accept. Of course, the program should adapt to the future student, but you should not skip steps, even if the child is making progress.

There are methods that offer to teach a child to read by memorizing whole words. Alas, experiments show that such techniques generally work worse. For example, a group of scientists from the United States came up with an artificial alphabet and offered subjects to learn it, and then read the words written using this alphabet. At the same time, some subjects were immediately explained the principles of correspondence between sounds and letters, while others had to derive reading rules on their own based on whole words. It turned out that the first group copes with reading new, previously unfamiliar words better than the second.

Therefore, we advise you to choose those teaching methods that involve clear instructions about the relationship between sound and letter - and this is especially important for those children who have difficulty reading. Below we have compiled a few of these techniques that you can use to teach your preschooler at home.

Methods of teaching preschoolers to read

Warehouse reading

The method of teaching a child to read through warehouses was actually used in Rus', but for modern parents this technique is associated with the name of the philologist Nikolai Alexandrovich Zaitsev.

Zaitsev suggests not focusing on the study of individual letters, as it can be difficult for students to understand how letters can merge into syllables and words. Teaching a child to read by syllables is also not always easy: one syllable can be quite long ( shine, ruble ), and the boundaries of syllables are not obvious ( Lun-tik or Lu-ntik ?). Therefore, in Zaitsev's methodology, a warehouse is used as the main unit.

Warehouse can be a combination of a consonant and a vowel (pa-pa, ma-ma), a single consonant or vowel (de- d , i-s -li, A -le-sha), as well as a combination of a consonant with a hard or soft sign (ma- l -chi-k, use d -yem).

In order for a preschooler to understand the differences between the recording of voiced and soft, vowel and consonant sounds, different types of warehouses have their own cube size, color and content, thanks to which the cubes sound when they are shaken. Cubes affect several channels of perception at once, and warehouses should not just be pronounced, but sung - this way, according to the author of the methodology, learning is more interesting and effective.

One of the advantages of the technique is that children willingly play with blocks themselves, and the process of learning to read becomes active, mobile.

Syllabic reading

This technique, according to some sources, was developed by the Romans. Later, Nadezhda Sergeevna Zhukova, a Soviet and Russian speech therapist, created a primer based on it. In it, she built her own system in which sounds and letters are sequentially introduced into speech.

Due to the fact that the concept of a syllable is introduced at an early stage, it is faster and easier to teach a child to read syllables together. By the way, as in Zaitsev's technique, it is proposed to sing syllables, and not just pronounce them.

Based on the syllabic method, Zhukova developed a set of teaching aids - copybooks, copybooks and a book for reading. Benefits will help teach children to read correctly 6 and 7 years old at home.

Both techniques for teaching preschoolers to read are used in the Skysmart Ready for School course. The course consists of two stages: first, children get acquainted with letters and warehouses, which allows them to quickly start reading simple words, and then they learn what a syllable is. Gradually, we introduce more complex syllabic constructions, move on to reading phrases and sentences.

Sound analytical-synthetic teaching method

This method originated in the USSR and is still considered the main one in Russian schools and kindergartens. It was developed by the Soviet teacher and Russian language methodologist Voskresenskaya Alexandra Ilyinichna.

Like N.S. Zhukova, Voskresenskaya proposed her own order in which children should learn letters and sounds. The principle of this sequence was that the child first learned the letters that can be combined into simple syllables, and then moved forward in the level of complexity. As a result, children learn syllables in this order:

Two-letter syllables (including one consonant): am, ma, ra, etc. and simple words from them: ra-ma, ma-sha, Pa-sha, etc.
Three-letter syllables with a central vowel: poppy, lat, etc.
The combination of the first two stages into words: sa-lat, earth-la, etc.
Words of three syllables and six letters: az-bu-ka, ve-se-lo, etc.
Words of two syllables and six letters: question-ros, tea-nick, etc.
Words with a combination of vowels at the beginning and end of a word: chair, March, etc.

In this way, children simultaneously prepare for more complex syllables at each stage and reinforce what they have learned earlier.

Exercises for learning to read

Learning to read, as a rule, takes place in several stages. First, the child listens to the sound, visually remembers the letters. Different games will help with this, where you need to look for letters, invent words, etc. When this stage is over, you can move on to syllables and games to work them out. And only after that it will be possible to proceed to words, and then to sentences and texts.

Letter memory exercises

The first step is to teach your child to recognize letters. To do this, you can use pictures with hidden letters. We use such exercises in the preparation for school lessons in Skysmart.

Ask your child to identify what letter a word begins with, or name as many words as possible that begin with a certain letter.

Next, we train to distinguish correctly written letters from incorrect ones. This is also important for learning to write: preschoolers often mirror letters or distort individual elements.

Exercises for vowels and consonants

To learn to distinguish between vowels and consonants, tasks will help you determine which sound a word begins with.

It will also help to remember the difference between vowels and consonants and search for an extra letter.

Word Building Exercises

When your child can read short words, ask him to make a word out of letters on his own.

Composing words from syllables is convenient if you have cubes at hand, but you can also try on paper.

Another good exercise is to fill in the missing letter in the word.