Emergent Readers

Reading Play

• Play includes pretend reading.
• “Reads” the pictures in a book by naming pictures, by making up a story while looking at pictures, and by telling the general sequence while turning pages.
• “Reads” the story in a book from memory.
• Uses a “reading” voice and reading expressions (Once upon a time…)

Reading Awareness

• Uses the language of literacy (top, bottom, before, after, same, different, etc.)
• Identifies the beginning, middle, and end of a story, with the main idea coming first and details added later.
• Demonstrates awareness that language can be written down and read later.
• Visually follows top to bottom, left to right cues as teacher points.
• Shows curiosity about environmental print.
• Differentiates between pictures and words.

Reading Skills

· Realizes that symbols stand for entities and that a word is a symbolic representation of its meaning; from this realization the child discovers that the length of a word does not depend on the physical characteristics of the object itself.

• Recognizes own written name.
• Sees first letter of own name in environmental print.
• Sees other letters of own name in environmental print.
• Differentiates between words and spaces; recognizes where one stops and another begins.
• Reads single words from rote in environmental print.
• Reads single words from rote in books, uses picture cues to predict words in books, and uses print cues as well as picture cues to predict words in books.
• Understands that words are composed of alphabet letters that consistently say the same sounds (phonemic awareness)
• Looks for word patterns.
• Demonstrates knowledge of letter-sound relationships (phonemic awareness) to read words. Reading progresses from reading initial phonemes to final phonemes to medial phonemes.

Cecile Culp Mielenz, Ph.D.
Institute for Educational Development
P.O. Box 718
Medina, WA 98039-0718
Permission granted to reproduce this page for classroom or non-profit educational purposes.