ESF Reading

P 4-5

Listen to story being read, look at pictures, feel objects.

Match objects to pictures/photographs or symbols.

Contextual Understanding

Use of Text

P 6-7

Sequence pictures from left to right to demonstrate

understanding of a text.

Follow or sequence pictures from narrative or their own

experiences and tell the story.

Identify familiar texts.

Join in with actions, signs, movements that relate to

familiar text, rhymes.

Use words from text to retell story.

Recognize familiar environmental print.

Show understanding or recognition of a familiar text by being

able to complete the sentence correctly.

Choose a book or demonstrate the desire to hear a

particular story.

Looks at books independently, displaying reading like

behaviors.

Communicate understanding of heard texts by answering

comprehension questions about familiar texts (yes/no).

Participates in shared reading, joining in with rhymes, refrains

and repeated texts.

Read with support showing changes of pace or emphasis.

P 8-ESF Phase 1 & 2

Know that books tell stories, poems or give information.

Order story events, correctly placing beginning, middle

and end.

Demonstrate understanding of order of key events in a

familiar story by retelling a simple story in the correct
sequence.

Read labels within the classroom.

Read familiar, simple stories and poems independently,

to point while reading and make correspondence
between words said and read.

Show confidence when retelling main elements of story

to a group, emphasising beginning, middle and end.

Locate and select a range of non-fiction books linked to

topic or interest.

Understands information can be retrieved from a text.

Show some awareness that particular books, pictures,

signs or symbols are associated with particular stories.

Show awareness of pictures telling one story.

Have favourite books and can say what they like about
them e.g. its funny, its scary etc.

Indicates recognition of familiar texts by demonstrating

consistent responses.

Use information gathered from the text to draw/write about

key characters/objects.

Describe story settings and relate them to own

experience and that of others.

Begin to use single words from text in other contexts.

Show an awareness that print and illustrations can

combine to tell a story.

Anticipate and use key word phrases from text.

Identify specific items in a story on request.

Talk about the ways different people or characters are

represented in texts.

Select appropriate objects, symbols, words to

accompany text.

Begin to discuss the main idea or message in a story.

Select a few words, signs or symbols with which they

are particularly familiar.

Show some understanding of how books work, for

example, turning pages and holding the book the right
way up.

Begin to match sounds to letters or groups of letters.

Differentiate between letters/symbols (text) and pictures.

Reads the letters of the alphabet by name and sound.

Begin to show awareness of difference between picture

and words.

Link a picture to a word/symbol/letter in simple matching

games.

Recognise a few symbols or pictures presented in a way

familiar to them.

Follow words left to right in a range of contexts, moving finger

along text left to right either as self or adult reads.

Recognizes the difference between a letter and a word,

identifying that words have space on either side.
Select correct short word from text when they hear
initial word sound.

Demonstrate understanding of the conventions of reading

e.g. following text left to right, top to bottom and page
following page.

Read on sight 30-50 words from the High Frequency

words list.

Read words with initial consonant clusters bl, cr, tr, str.

Order three given key-words to make a sentence.

Read consistently high interest words and common

nouns e.g. days of the week and colours.

Read words with ff, ll, ss, ck, ng.

Recognize initial sounds ch, sh, th.

Recognize language patterns and repeated words and

phrases in a text.

Relate the events in the story to their own experiences.

Processes and Strategies

Conventions

Identifies letters in both upper and lower case.

Watch adult point to text.

Use picture cues to predict unknown words within a text

being read to them or read by them.

Identify first and last sounds when shown an unfamiliar

word.

Repeat copy and imitate adult model of finger scanning

pictures left to right in personal space.

Recognize when the order is incorrect and make changes.

Starts to show an awareness of rhyme.

Expect written text to make sense and check for sense if

it does not.

Make predictions about what might happen next in a

text.

Use a range of strategies (phonological, contextual,

grammatical, and graphic) to work out, predict and
check the meaning of unfamiliar words and to make
sense of what they have read.

Match picture to picture, symbol to symbol, or word to

word.
Point to specific objects or characters in a story/picture.
PECS stage 6.
Sequence two pictures/symbols to demonstrate
understanding