Early Emergent

Literacy
 Emergent literacy is the idea that
learning literacy actually begins at a
very early age, long before official
lessons in school.
 Stages of Literacy Development

PRE-EMERGENT (Birth – Age 3)

– Handles books, turns pages, examines
illustrations
– Asks to be read to
– “Reads” aloud and silently to self
– Memorizes passages or phrases in
books
– Scribbles, imitates writing even if it
isn’t legible
EMERGENT READER (Ages 2-5)

– Understands that the print in the book

carries meaning (along with the
illustrations)
– Notices environmental print (writing
on toys, signs, food containers)
– Recognizes letters
– Reads meaningful words such as
name, mom, dad, etc.
– Writes meaningful words, such as name,
may be inaccurately spelled or illegible
– Begins to match spoken words to written
words
– Understands directionality of print (that
we read left to right and top to bottom)
– Begins to understand that spoken words
are made up of sounds, like hearing the
sound /b/ at the beginning of boy
– Hears and produces rhyming language
– Knows some letter-sound relationships
 BEGINNING READER (Ages 4-8)
– Able to hear, count and manipulate
sounds and syllables within words
(Phonological awareness)
– Has mastered the letter-sound
relationships
– Uses letter-sound relationships to
decode (sound out) words
– Uses letter-sound relationships to spell
phonetically-regular words
– Increases sight word vocabulary for
both reading and writing
– Begins to write simple sentences
– Can read and understand simple texts,
which are often composed of repetitive
language, phonetically-regular words and
high-frequency sight words
– Begins to self-monitor reading, making
self-corrections when the error does not
make sense or fit visual cues
– Starts to develop comprehension
strategies such as predicting, using
context, and rereading
INDEPENDENT READER (Ages 8 and
upward)

– Develops greater reading fluency

– Reads independently in a variety of
genres and for many purposes
– Uses word-identification strategies to
read most unknown words
– Uses knowledge of roots, prefixes and
suffixes to decode and understand the
meaning of words
– Sight word vocabulary continues to
grow
– Asks and answers (orally and in
writing) explicit and open-ended
questions related to text
– Written work is organized and
coherent
– Uses reading skills to acquire new
information **
 Emergent and Early Literacy:
Reading Development and
Performance

Step 1
 From birth, infants listen to sounds of
speech and that of their native language.

Step 2
 Fast mapping – is the child’s ability to
map the meaning of a new word onto a
referent after hearing the word used on
context just once.
 Holophrase – is a single word used to
represent a phrase sentence; typical of
the first stage of language acquisition.

 Vocabulary explosion – is the rapid

addition of new words to a toddler’s
vocabulary which usually occurs late in
the second year.
Step 3
Using this index, stages of language
development have been identified (Cobb,
2001):

1.) Children speak in two-word sentences.

2.) Children use rules to inflect words,

indicating plurality and tense.
3.) Children can use rules to transpose
meaning from one form of sentence to
another.

4.) Children’s sentences become

increasingly complex in the fourth and fifth
stages.
Step 4
Teale and Sulzby (1989 as cited by
Tompkins, 2002) paint a portrait of young
children as literacy learners with these
characteristics:

1.) learning the functions of literacy

through observation and participation in
real-life situations in where reading and
writing are used;
2.) developing reading and writing abilities
concurrently and interrelatedly through
experiences in reading and writing; and

3.) constructing understanding of reading

and writing through engagement with
literacy materials.
Step 5
According to Juel (1991 as cited by
Tompkins, 2002) children move through
three stages as they learn to read, namely:
emergent reading, beginning reading, and
fluent reading.
 Prepared by:
Eunice A. Mercullo
BSEd II Social Studies

Submitted to:
Ms. Catherine Lara
Instructor