This document outlines the major stages of reading skills development: reading readiness, beginning reading, and independent reading. It describes the foundational skills developed at each stage, including print awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Print awareness involves understanding how books work and that words are made up of letters. Phonemic awareness is recognizing that words are made of sounds. Phonics teaches the relationship between sounds and letters. Vocabulary and fluency are important for accurate and quick reading. Comprehension is the goal and involves understanding what is read.

1. MAJOR STAGES OF
READING SKILLS
DEVELOPMENT
A. READING READINESS
B. BEGINNING READING
C. INDEPENDENT READING STAGE

2. The initial process of learning to
recognize words, phrases and sentences as
symbols for ideas. Usually, this covers
grades I and II in the elementary years.
The stage includes:
1. Getting acquainted with an idea or experience.
2. Seeing how the combination of symbols that
stand for the idea looks.
3. Remembering how the combination of symbols
may be distinguished from other combinations.
BEGINNING READING

3. 1. PRINT AWARENESS
2. PHONEMIC AWARENESS
3. PHONICS
4. VOCABULARY
5. FLUENCY
6. COMPREHENSION
FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS

4. PRINT AWARENESS
 Includes the concept of book orientation.
◦ Does the student know how to properly hold a
book, or does he hold it upside down?
◦ Does she/he know that pages are turned from the
right –hand side of the book?
◦ Does she/he know that words are read left-to-right
and, when appropriate, the left page is read before
the right page?

5.  Understand that words are made up of
letters and that there are spaces between
words.

9. PHONEMIC AWARENESS
 It is the ability to understand that words
are made up of sounds.
 A PHONEME
◦ comes from the Greek word “phonema” which
means sound
◦ is a single speech sound;
◦ smallest unit of sound within a spoken word
e.g.
the letter b represents the sound /b/

11. How many phonemes in English?
◦ The English language has about 44
sounds of speech.
This 44 sounds are represented in
the English writing system by 26
letters of the alphabet and
combinations of those letters.

14. Hearing the phonemes in words.
◦ To hear the phonemes in a word, one must
break the word up into its sound – this is called
“segmenting”.
For example: FUN /f/ /u/ /n/

15. A complex phonic code.
◦ The English phonic code is complex.
◦ In English phoneme can be spelled by 1-4
letters.
Phonemes spelled by 1-4 letters.
Examples:
‘sit’ /s/ /i/ /t/
‘mail’ /m/ /ai/ /l/
‘catch’ /c/ /a/ /tch/
‘through’ /th/ /r/ /ough/

17. PHONICS
 Unlike phonemic awareness activities that use
only sounds (and not print),
 Phonics is the understanding that there is a
relationship between
◦ PHONEMES - the sounds of spoken language;
- speech sound
◦ GRAPHEMES - the letters and spellings that
represent these sounds in written language;
spelling choices to represents the phonemes

20.  GRAPHEME
◦ comes from the greek word “graphema”
which means letter
◦ is a spelling of a sound in a word.
◦ is a symbol (letter) or a combination of
symbols (letters) that represent a sound
in a word or single phonemes,
like the “s” and the “oo” in “spoon”.

21. Graphemes spell sounds in words.
Example: MAT /m/ /a/ /t/
The word ‘mat’ has 3 sounds, and spelled
by 3 letters. Each grapheme is a one-
letter grapheme.

22. 2-letter graphemes (digraph).
Shop /sh/ /o/ /p/ snow /s/ /n/ /ow/
Keep /k/ /ee/ /p/
Day /d/ /ay/

23. How many phonemes in English?
◦ The English language has about 44
sounds of speech.
This 44 sounds are represented in
the English writing system by 26
letters of the alphabet and
combinations of those letters.

26. 3-letter graphemes.
Examples:
 Night /n/ /igh/ /t/
 Fair /f/ /air/
 Hedge /h/ /e/ /dge/

29. 4-letter graphemes.
Examples:
 Weight /w/ /eigh/ /t/
 Dough /d/ /ough/
 Daughter /d/ /augh/ /t/ /er/

32. VOCABULARY
 Is the large category that includes listening
vocabulary, speaking vocabulary, reading
vocabulary, and writing vocabulary.
 VOCABULARY refers to the words that we must
know in order to communicate effectively.
◦ Vocabulary can be learned
 indirectly (e.g., through being read to, through
conversations with adults)
 Directly (e.g., through specific word instruction or
through strategies such as breaking longer words down
into familiar parts)
 Is the combination of word identification and
fluency, or reading accurately and knowing what
the word means.

35. FLUENCY
 Refers to the ability to read text accurately
and quickly.
 Fluency is important because it provides a
bridge between word recognition and
comprehension.
 Fluent readers do not have to concentrate on
decoding so they can focus their efforts on
making meaning of the text.
 Is when a child can read text quickly and
accurately.

37. COMPREHENSION
 the action or capability of understanding
something; the ability to make meaning out of
the text.
 Experiential background (prior knowledge)
will contribute to comprehension as the students
begins to remember facts, sequence, and main
idea of information read.

38. Direction:
1. Get at least 3 words from the poem and segment it to
identify the phonemes and graphemes.
2. Give a short interpretation of the poem presented above.
Nayyirah Waheed

39. COMPREHENSION
 It is therefore important to assess for
comprehension difficulties, and to teach what
the student doesn’t understand.
 Students may be taught what to look for before
reading the text or be provided questions to
answer as they read. Some students will be
taught to actively ask questions as they read or
summarize, or rephrase parts of the text as they
read to aid in comprehension. Asking for
assistance on parts that are not understood is
also important.