Developmental Trends: Reading at Different Age Levels

Diversity:

• Temperamental differences influence infants’ and toddlers’ ability to sit still and attend to books.

Implications:

• Provide small, durable picture books of cloth, cardboard, or plastic.
• Read books with catchy rhythms and rhymes to capture and maintain attention.
• During story time, label and talk about the pictures in books. Recognize that toddlers may not be able to sit still for a lengthy story.

Early Childhood (2–6)

What You Might Observe:

• Incorporation of books and familiar story lines into play activities
• Increasing knowledge of letters and letter-sound correspondences
• Identification of a few words in well-known contexts (e.g., words on commercial products)
• Use of a word’s distinctive features (e.g., a single letter or overall shape) to read or misread it

Diversity:

• Children who have had little exposure to books and reading before starting school may have less knowledge about the nature of reading. Some cultures emphasize oral language more than written language.
• When parents speak a language other than English, they may provide early literacy experiences in their native tongue; such experiences provide a good foundation for reading and writing in English.
• Some children begin school knowing the alphabet and may have a small sight vocabulary as well. Others may need to start from scratch in learning letters and letter sounds.

Implications:

• Read to young children using colorful books with high-interest content.
• Teach letters of the alphabet through engaging, hands-on activities.
• Teach letter-sound relationships through storybooks, games, rhymes, and enjoyable writing activities.
• Encourage children to read words that can easily be identified from their contexts.
• Encourage parents to read regularly to children.

Middle Childhood (6–10)

What You Might Observe:

• Ability to hear individual phonemes within words
• Increasing proficiency in identifying unfamiliar words
• Growing sight-word vocabulary, leading to greater reading fluency
• Beginning of silent reading (at age 7 or 8)
• Increasing ability to draw inferences
• Tendency to take things in print at face value

Diversity:

• Children with deficits in phonological awareness have a more difficult time learning to read.
• Children with hearing impairments may be slower to master letter-sound relationships.
• On average, girls develop reading skills earlier than boys.
• Children vary widely in their use of effective comprehension strategies.

Implications:

• Explore “families” of words that are spelled similarly.
• Assign well-written trade books (e.g., children’s paperback novels) as soon as children are able to read and understand them.
• Engage children in discussions about books. Focus on interpretation, inference drawing, and speculation.
• For children who struggle with reading, explicitly teach phonological awareness and word identification skills, especially within the context of meaningful reading activities.

Early Adolescence (10–14)

What You Might Observe:

• Automatized recognition of most common words
• Ability to learn new information through reading
• Emerging ability to go beyond the literal meaning of text
• Emerging metacognitive processes that aid comprehension (e.g., comprehension monitoring, backtracking)

Diversity:

• Adolescents with deficits in phonological awareness continue to lag behind their peers in reading development.
• Individuals who were poor readers in elementary school often continue to be poor readers in adolescence.
• Some individuals (e.g., some with mental retardation) may have excellent word identification skills yet not understand what they read.
• Individuals with sensory challenges may have less general world knowledge that they can use to construct meaning from what they read.

Implications:

• Assign age-appropriate reading materials in various content areas; provide scaffolding (e.g., questions to answer) to guide youngsters’ thinking and learning as they read.
• Begin to explore classic works of poetry and fiction.
• Use reciprocal teaching to promote poor readers’ comprehension skills.
• Seek the advice and assistance of specialists to help promote the reading skills of youngsters who lag far behind their peers.

Late Adolescence (14–18)

What You Might Observe:

• Automatized recognition of many abstract and discipline-specific words
• Ability to consider multiple viewpoints about a single topic
• Ability to critically evaluate what is read
• More sophisticated metacognitive reading strategies

Diversity:

• Poor readers draw few if any inferences from what they read and use few if any effective metacognitive processes.
• As classroom learning becomes more dependent on reading textbooks and other written materials, adolescents with reading disabilities may become increasingly frustrated in their attempts to achieve academic success.
• Girls are more likely than boys to enroll in advanced literature classes.

Implications:

• Expect that many teenagers can learn effectively from textbooks and other reading materials, but continue to scaffold reading assignments, especially for poor readers.
• Encourage adolescents to draw inferences and make predictions from what they read.
• Critically analyze classic works of poetry and fiction.
• Modify reading materials and paper-pencil assessments for individuals with delayed reading development.