Reading skill for kids

Reading Development and Skills by Age

Reading Development and Skills by Age | Understood

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ByAmanda Morin

What you’ll learn

Babies (ages 0–12 months)
Toddlers (ages 1–2 years)
Preschoolers (ages 3–4 years)
Kindergartners (age 5 years)
Younger grade-schoolers (ages 6–7 years)
Older grade-schoolers (ages 8–10 years)
Middle-schoolers and high-schoolers

Even as babies, kids build reading skills that set the foundation for learning to read. Here’s a list of reading milestones by age. Keep in mind that kids develop reading skills at their own pace, so they may not be on this exact timetable.

Babies (ages 0–12 months)

Begin to reach for soft-covered books or board books
Look at and touch the pictures in books
Respond to a storybook by cooing or making sounds
Help turn pages

Toddlers (ages 1–2 years)

Look at pictures and name familiar items, like dog, cup, and baby
Answer questions about what they see in books
Recognize the covers of favorite books
Recite the words to favorite books
Start pretending to read by turning pages and making up stories

Preschoolers (ages 3–4 years)

Know the correct way to hold and handle a book
Understand that words are read from left to right and pages are read from top to bottom
Start noticing words that rhyme
Retell stories
Recognize about half the letters of the alphabet
Start matching letter sounds to letters (like knowing b makes a /b/ sound)
May start to recognize their name in print and other often-seen words, like those on signs and logos

Kindergartners (age 5 years)

Match each letter to the sound it represents
Identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in spoken words like dog or sit
Say new words by changing the beginning sound, like changing rat to sat
Start matching words they hear to words they see on the page
Sound out simple words
Start to recognize some words by sight without having to sound them out
Ask and answer who, what, where, when, why, and how questions about a story
Retell a story in order, using words or pictures
Predict what happens next in a story
Start reading or asking to be read books for information and for fun
Use story language during playtime or conversation (like “I can fly!” the dragon said. “I can fly!”)

Younger grade-schoolers (ages 6–7 years)

Learn spelling rules
Keep increasing the number of words they recognize by sight
Improve reading speed and fluency
Use context clues to sound out and understand unfamiliar words
Go back and re-read a word or sentence that doesn’t makes sense (self-monitoring)
Connect what they’re reading to personal experiences, other books they’ve read, and world events

Older grade-schoolers (ages 8–10 years)

In third grade, move from learning to read to reading to learn
Accurately read words with more than one syllable
Learn about prefixes, suffixes, and root words, like those in helpful, helpless, and unhelpful
Read for different purposes (for enjoyment, to learn something new, to figure out directions, etc.)
Explore different genres
Describe the setting, characters, problem/solution, and plot of a story
Identify and summarize the sequence of events in a story
Identify the main theme and may start to identify minor themes
Make inferences (“read between the lines”) by using clues from the text and prior knowledge
Compare and contrast information from different texts
Refer to evidence from the text when answering questions about it
Understand similes, metaphors, and other descriptive devices

Middle-schoolers and high-schoolers

Keep expanding vocabulary and reading more complex texts
Analyze how characters develop, interact with each other, and advance the plot
Determine themes and analyze how they develop over the course of the text
Use evidence from the text to support analysis of the text
Identify imagery and symbolism in the text
Analyze, synthesize, and evaluate ideas from the text
Understand satire, sarcasm, irony, and understatement

Keep in mind that some schools focus on different skills in different grades. So, look at how a child reacts to reading, too. For example, kids who have trouble reading might get anxious when they have to read.

If you’re concerned about reading skills, find out why some kids struggle with reading.

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About the author

Amanda Morin is the author of “The Everything Parent’s Guide to Special Education” and the former director of thought leadership at Understood. As an expert and writer, she helped build Understood from its earliest days.

Reviewed by

Ginny Osewalt is a dually certified elementary and special education teacher with more than 15 years of experience in general education, inclusion, resource room, and self-contained settings.

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10 Ways to Improve Your Child's Reading Skills

Nothing is more important to academic achievement than being a good reader. Parents know their children best and can provide the one-on-one time and attention that will lead them to success in reading. Here is a list of ways to help your children become more effective readers.

Set Aside a Designated "Reading Time" Daily

Studies show that regularly reading out loud to children will produce significant gains in reading comprehension, vocabulary, and the decoding of words. Whether your children are preschoolers or preteens, it will increase their desire to read independently.

Surround Kids With Reading Material

Children with a large array of reading materials in their homes score higher on standardized tests. Tempt your kids to read by having a large supply of appealing books and magazines at their reading level. Put the reading materials in cars, bathrooms, bedrooms, family rooms, and even by the TV.

More: 8 Classic Dr. Seuss Books for Kids

Have Family Reading Time

Establish a daily 15 to 30 minute time when everyone in the family reads together silently. Seeing you read will inspire your children to read. Just 15 minutes of daily practice is sufficient to increase their reading fluency.

Encourage Reading Activities

Make reading an integral part of your children's lives. Have them read menus, roadside signs, game directions, weather reports, movie time listings, and other practical everyday information. Also, make sure they always have something to read in their spare time when they could be waiting for appointments or riding in a car.

Develop the Library Habit

Entice your children to read more by taking them to the library every few weeks to get new reading materials. The library also offers reading programs for children of all ages that may appeal to your children and further increase their interest in reading.

Track Your Child's Progress

Find out what reading skills they are expected to have at each grade level. The school's curriculum will give you this information. Track their progress in acquiring basic reading skills on report cards and standardized tests.

Look for Reading Problems

Teachers do not always detect children's reading problems until they've become serious. Find out if your children can sound out words, know sight words, use context to identify unknown words, and clearly understand what they read.

Get Help for Reading Problems

Reading problems do not magically disappear with time. The earlier children receive help, the more likely they will become good readers. Make sure your children receive necessary help from teachers, tutors, or learning centers as soon as you discover a problem.

More: The Skills Kids Need to Read

Use Aids That Help With Reading

To help your children improve their reading, use textbooks, computer programs, books-on-tape, and other materials available in stores. Games are especially good choices because they let children have fun as they work on their skills.

Show Enthusiasm

Your reaction has a great influence on how hard they will try to become good readers. Be sure to give them genuine praise for their efforts.

Formation of reading skills in children: stages and exercises

Primary school is a special stage in the life of any child, which is associated with the formation of the basics of his ability to learn, the ability to organize his activities. It is a full-fledged reading skill that provides the student with the opportunity to independently acquire new knowledge, and in the future creates the necessary basis for self-education in subsequent education in high school and after school.

Interest in reading arises when a child is fluent in conscious reading, while he has developed educational and cognitive motives for reading. Reading activity is not something spontaneous that arises on its own. To master it, it is important to know the ways of reading, the methods of semantic text processing, as well as other skills.

Reading is a complex psychophysiological process in which visual, speech-auditory and speech-motor analyzers take part. A child who has not learned to read or does it poorly cannot comprehend the necessary knowledge and use it in practice. If the child can read, but at the same time he does not understand what he read, then this will also lead to great difficulties in further learning and, as a result, failure at school.

Reading begins with visual perception, discrimination and recognition of letters. This is the basis on the basis of which the letters are correlated with the corresponding sounds and the sound-producing image of the word is reproduced, i. e. his reading. In addition, through the correlation of the sound form of the word with its meaning, the understanding of what is read is carried out.

Stages of developing reading skills

T.G. Egorov identifies several stages in the formation of reading skills:

Acquisition of sound-letter designations.
Reading by syllable.
The formation of synthetic reading techniques.
Synthetic reading.

The mastery of sound-letter designations occurs throughout the entire pre-letter and literal periods. At this stage, children analyze the speech flow, sentence, divide it into syllables and sounds. The child correlates the selected sound from speech with a certain graphic image (letter).

Having mastered the letter, the child reads the syllables and words with it. When reading a syllable in the process of merging sounds, it is important to move from an isolated generalized sound to the sound that the sound acquires in the speech stream. In other words, the syllable must be pronounced as it sounds in oral speech.

At the stage of syllable-by-syllable reading, the recognition of letters and the merging of sounds into syllables occurs without any problems. Accordingly, the unit of reading is the syllable. The difficulty of synthesizing at this stage may still remain, especially in the process of reading words that are difficult in structure and long.

The stage of formation of synthetic reading techniques is characterized by the fact that simple and familiar words are read holistically, but complex and unfamiliar words are read syllable by syllable. At this stage, frequent replacements of words, endings, i.e. guessing reading takes place. Such errors lead to a discrepancy between the content of the text and the read.

The stage of synthetic reading is characterized by the fact that the technical side of reading is no longer difficult for the reader (he practically does not make mistakes). Reading comprehension comes first. There is not only a synthesis of words in a sentence, but also a synthesis of phrases in a general context. But it is important to understand that understanding the meaning of what is read is possible only when the child knows the meaning of each word in the text, i.e. Reading comprehension directly depends on the development of the lexico-grammatical side of speech.

Features of the formation of reading skills

There are 4 main qualities of reading skill:

Correct. By this is understood the process of reading, which occurs without errors that can distort the general meaning of the text.
Fluency. This is reading speed, which is measured by the number of printed characters that are read in 1 minute.
Consciousness. It implies understanding by the reader of what he reads, artistic means and images of the text.
Expressiveness. It is the ability by means of oral speech to convey the main idea of the work and one's personal attitude to it.

Accordingly, the main task of teaching reading skills is to develop these skills in schoolchildren.

All education in the primary grades is based on reading lessons. If the student has mastered the skill of reading, speaking and writing, then other subjects will be given to him much easier. Difficulties during training arise, as a rule, due to the fact that the student could not independently obtain information from books and textbooks.

Methods and exercises for developing reading skills

In educational practice, there are 2 fundamentally opposite methods of teaching reading - linguistic (the method of whole words) and phonological.

Linguistic method teaches the words that are most commonly used, as well as those that are read the same as they are written. This method is aimed at teaching children to recognize words as whole units, without breaking them into components. The child is simply shown and said the word. After about 100 words have been learned, the child is given a text in which these words are often found. In our country, this technique is known as the Glenn Doman method.

The phonetic approach is based on the alphabetical principle. Its basis is phonetics, i.e. learning to pronounce letters and sounds. As knowledge is accumulated, the child gradually moves to syllables, and then to whole words.

Reading begins with visual perception, discrimination and recognition of letters. This is the basis on the basis of which the letters are correlated with the corresponding sounds and the sound-producing image of the word is reproduced, i.e. his reading. In addition, through the correlation of the sound form of the word with its meaning, the understanding of what is read is carried out.

In addition, there are several other methods:

Zaitsev method . It involves teaching children warehouses as units of language structure. A warehouse is a pair of a consonant and a vowel (either a consonant and a hard or soft sign, or one letter). Warehouses are written on different faces of the cube, which differ in size, color, etc.
Moore method. Learning begins with sounds and letters. The whole process is carried out in a specially equipped room, where there is a typewriter that makes sounds and names of punctuation marks and numbers when a certain key is pressed. Next, the child is shown a combination of letters that he must type on a typewriter.
Montessori method. It involves teaching children the letters of the alphabet, as well as the ability to recognize, write and pronounce them. After they learn how to combine sounds into words, they are encouraged to combine words into sentences. The didactic material consists of letters that are cut out of rough paper and pasted onto cardboard plates. The child repeats the sound after the adult, after which he traces the outline of the letter with his finger.
Soboleva O.L. This method is based on the “bihemispheric” work of the brain. By learning letters, children learn them through recognizable images or characters, which makes it especially easy for children with speech disorders to learn and remember letters.

There is no universal methodology for developing reading skills. But in modern teaching methods, a general approach is recognized when learning begins with an understanding of sounds and letters, i.e. from phonetics.

There are certain exercises that help build reading skills. Here are a few of them:

Reading lines backwards letter by letter. The exercise contributes to the development of letter-by-letter analysis. The meaning is simple - the words are read in reverse order, i.e. from right to left.
Reading through the word. You do not need to read all the words in a sentence, but jumping over one.
Reading dotted words. Words are written on the cards, but some letters are missing (dotted lines are drawn instead).
Read only the second half of the word. Read only the second part of the word, the first part is omitted. The exercise contributes to the understanding that the second part of the word is no less important than the first, thereby preventing the omission (or reading with distortion) of the endings of words in the future.
Reading lines with the upper half covered. A sheet of paper is superimposed over the text so that the top of the stitching is covered.
Fast and multiple repetition. The child should repeat a line of a poem or a sentence aloud as quickly as possible and several times in a row. Correct pronunciation is extremely important, so if necessary, you need to stop and correct the child.
Find the words in the text. The child is faced with the task of finding words in the text as quickly as possible. First, they are shown in pictures, then voiced by the teacher.
Buzzing reading. The text is read by all students aloud, but in an undertone.

A. Herzen wrote: “Without reading, there is no real education, no, and there can be neither taste, nor style, nor the many-sided breadth of understanding.”

Indeed, mastering a full-fledged reading skill is the most important condition for success in basic subjects at school. At the same time, this is one of the main ways of obtaining information, which is vital for the speech, mental and aesthetic development of children.

____________________________________________

We are waiting for you in our speech center! We are always glad to you and your kids.

Call us: 8 (962) 758-53-62, 8 (909) 391-08-08

stages and exercises. Blog Logo-Expert

Blog Logo-Expert

formation speech reading

Elementary school is a special stage in the life of any child, which is associated with the formation of the basics of his ability to learn, the ability to organize his activities. It is a full-fledged reading skill that provides the student with the opportunity to independently acquire new knowledge, and in the future creates the necessary basis for self-education in subsequent education in high school and after school.

Reading is a complex psycho-physiological process in which visual, speech-auditory and speech-motor analyzers take part. A child who has not learned to read or does it poorly cannot comprehend the necessary knowledge and use it in practice. If the child can read, but at the same time he does not understand what he read, then this will also lead to great difficulties in further learning and, as a result, failure at school.

Reading begins with visual perception, discrimination and recognition of letters. This is the basis on the basis of which the letters are correlated with the corresponding sounds and the sound-producing image of the word is reproduced, i.e. his reading. In addition, through the correlation of the sound form of the word with its meaning, the understanding of what is read is carried out.

There are 3 main points in the complex process of reading:

Perception of these words. The process of reading itself implies that the reader guesses by letter what words they stand for. Reading begins only when the reader, looking at the letters, can pronounce or recall the word that corresponds to the combination of these letters. Accordingly, in addition to vision, memory, mind and imagination are involved in this process.
Reading comprehension. Each word that we read can cause a certain change in our minds, which is due to the understanding of this word. For one word, some vivid image pops up in our minds, for another - a feeling, etc.
Reading score. In the formation of reading skills, not only the fact itself (“I read the book”) is important, but a critical assessment of the material read.

Reading in children is always driven by need. At the first stage, it is the desire to learn to read; to master the very process of the emergence of the letters of the word. When this skill is mastered, another motivation arises: the desire to understand what exactly a particular text means. In the future, the motives become more complicated, and the child wants to find out some specific fact, understand the motives of the main character, determine the main idea in a popular science text, etc.

T.G. Egorov identifies several stages in the formation of reading skills:

Mastering sound-letter designations.
Reading by syllable.
Development of synthetic reading techniques.
Synthetic reading.

Acquisition of sound-letter designations occurs during the entire pre-letter and literal periods. At this stage, children analyze the speech flow, sentence, divide it into syllables and sounds. The child correlates the selected sound from speech with a certain graphic image (letter).

Having mastered a letter, the child reads the syllables and words with it. When reading a syllable in the process of merging sounds, it is important to move from an isolated generalized sound to the sound that the sound acquires in the speech stream. In other words, the syllable must be pronounced as it sounds in oral speech.

The stage of formation of synthetic reading techniques is characterized by the fact that simple and familiar words are read as a whole, but complex and unfamiliar words are read syllable by syllable. At this stage, frequent replacements of words, endings, i.e. guessing reading takes place. Such errors lead to a discrepancy between the content of the text and the read.

There are 4 main qualities of reading skill:

Correctness. By this is understood the process of reading, which occurs without errors that can distort the general meaning of the text.
Fluency. This is reading speed, which is measured by the number of printed characters that are read in 1 minute.
Consciousness. It implies understanding by the reader of what he reads, artistic means and images of the text.
Expressiveness. It is the ability by means of oral speech to convey the main idea of the work and one's personal attitude to it.

Accordingly, the main task of teaching reading skills is to develop these skills in schoolchildren.

All primary school education is based on reading lessons. If the student has mastered the skill of reading, speaking and writing, then other subjects will be given to him much easier. Difficulties during training arise, as a rule, due to the fact that the student could not independently obtain information from books and textbooks.

In educational practice, there are 2 fundamentally opposite methods of teaching reading - linguistic (the method of whole words) and phonological.

The linguistic method involves teaching on the words that are most often used, as well as those that are read the same as they are written. This method is aimed at teaching children to recognize words as whole units, without breaking them into components. The child is simply shown and said the word. After about 100 words have been learned, the child is given a text in which these words are often found. In our country, this technique is known as the Glenn Doman method.

The phonetic approach is based on the alphabetical principle. Its basis is phonetics, i.e. learning to pronounce letters and sounds. As knowledge is accumulated, the child gradually moves to syllables, and then to whole words.

In addition, there are several more methods:

Zaitsev method. It involves teaching children warehouses as units of language structure. A warehouse is a pair of a consonant and a vowel (either a consonant and a hard or soft sign, or one letter). Warehouses are written on different faces of the cube, which differ in size, color, etc.
Moore method. Learning begins with sounds and letters. The whole process is carried out in a specially equipped room, where there is a typewriter that makes sounds and names of punctuation marks and numbers when a certain key is pressed. Next, the child is shown a combination of letters that he must type on a typewriter.
Montessori method. It involves teaching children the letters of the alphabet, as well as the ability to recognize, write and pronounce them. After they learn how to combine sounds into words, they are encouraged to combine words into sentences. The didactic material consists of letters that are cut out of rough paper and pasted onto cardboard plates. The child repeats the sound after the adult, after which he traces the outline of the letter with his finger.
Soboleva O.L. This method is based on the "bihemispheric" work of the brain. By learning letters, children learn them through recognizable images or characters, which makes it especially easy for children with speech disorders to learn and remember letters.

There are certain exercises that help build reading skills. Here are a few of them:

Reading lines backwards letter by letter. The exercise contributes to the development of letter-by-letter analysis. The meaning is simple - the words are read in reverse order, i.e. from right to left.
Reading through the word. You do not need to read all the words in a sentence, but jumping over one.
Reading dotted words. Words are written on the cards, but several letters are missing (dotted lines are drawn instead).
Read only the second half of the word. You need to read only the second part of the word, while the first is omitted. The exercise contributes to the understanding that the second part of the word is no less important than the first, thereby preventing the omission (or reading with distortion) of the endings of words in the future.
Reading lines with the upper half covered. A sheet of paper is superimposed on the text so that the top of the line is covered.
Fast and multiple repetition. The child should repeat a line of a poem or sentence aloud as quickly as possible and several times in a row. Correct pronunciation is extremely important, so if necessary, you need to stop and correct the child.
Find the words in the text. The child is faced with the task of finding words in the text as quickly as possible. First, they are shown in pictures, then voiced by the teacher.
Buzzing reading. The text is read by all students aloud, but in an undertone.

A. Herzen wrote: “Without reading, there is no true education, no, and there can be neither taste, nor style, nor the many-sided breadth of understanding.” Indeed, mastering a full-fledged reading skill is the most important condition for academic achievement in the main subjects at school. At the same time, this is one of the main ways of obtaining information, which is vital for the speech, mental and aesthetic development of children.

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Reading skill for kids

Reading Development and Skills by Age

ByAmanda Morin

What you’ll learn

Babies (ages 0–12 months)

Toddlers (ages 1–2 years)

Preschoolers (ages 3–4 years)

Kindergartners (age 5 years)

Younger grade-schoolers (ages 6–7 years)

Older grade-schoolers (ages 8–10 years)

Middle-schoolers and high-schoolers

Explore topics selected by our experts

Related topics

Tell us what interests you

About the author

About the author

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Discover what’s possible when you’re understood.

10 Ways to Improve Your Child's Reading Skills

Formation of reading skills in children: stages and exercises

Stages of developing reading skills

Features of the formation of reading skills

Methods and exercises for developing reading skills

We are waiting for you in our speech center! We are always glad to you and your kids.

Call us: 8 (962) 758-53-62, 8 (909) 391-08-08

stages and exercises. Blog Logo-Expert

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