Print carries meaning and messages even if a child cannot read words correctly from left to right. Books are organized with directionality from front to back and left to right with things like the cover, title, and author. Printed language consists of letters, words, and sentences that the emergent reader learns with concepts like punctuation, beginning and end of sentences, and sounds in sequence within words.

1. Prepared by Community of Learners Foundation

2.  Print carries a message. Even when a
child "play reads" text using pictures and
memory, the child demonstrates an
understanding of this concept, even if she
cannot read the words, or reads them
backwards or front to back.

3.  Books are organized, with a cover, title,
and author, and reading in English flows in
a particular and consistent direction, left to
right and top to bottom.
- orientation
- directionality

4.  Printed language consists of letters,
words, and sentences. The emergent
reader gradually learns to dist).inguish
between these forms, learns the concepts
of "beginning" and "end," and understands
punctuation that marks text (e.g., period,
comma, and question mark

5. - Letters represent sounds.
- Words consist of letters.
- Sounds in words are produced in a
sequence.
- Sentences are made up of words.

6.  Recognition or matching of upper- and
lower-case letters, as well as some common
spelling sequences, are slightly more
complex concepts of print mastered by more
experienced beginning readers.