Children develop their literacy skills beginning at birth. The oral vocabulary they learn during their earliest stages of life help to develop an understanding of the rhythm and sounds of language. “Talking, reading aloud, and singing all stimulate children’s understanding and use of language, and help them learn to become good communicators and eager readers.” (Lerner, C. & Ciervo, 2004, p. 2)
Below is a chart of the language and literacy development stages from birth to grade 3.
Birth to 1 Year Toddler and Preschool Years The School Years
| AGE | LANGUAGE AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT STAGE |
| Birth to 2 Months | Capable of making all the sounds of language in every language, listens to the sounds of language around them |
| 2 Months | May smile on purpose, coo when you talk or gently play together, and mimic facial expressions |
| 3 Months | Reaches for you for comfort, attention and security |
| 4 to 6 Months | Begins to babble, squeal, gurgle and laugh, may respond to and imitate facial expressions and sounds, may take turns making sounds and change inflection of tones, begins to listen to your language to make sense of language, may recognize own name |
| 7 to 9 Months | Communicates with sounds, gestures and facial expressions, laughs and squeals, may respond to own name, can distinguish emotions by tone of voice, may repeat sounds they hear, babbles with ba-ba, ma-ma, and da-da |
| 10 to 12 Months | Responds to simple verbal requests, understands words for familiar people and events, more skilled gestures like shaking head “no”, pointing, and waving “bye-bye”, begins saying words with meaning like “ma-ma”, “da-da”, and “uh-oh” |
(Information gathered from The Mayo Clinic)
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| AGE | LANGUAGE AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT STAGE |
| 1 to 2 Years | Imitates the sounds of others, repeats words they hear, increases their vocabularies from 2 to 3 words to about 250 words, understands more oral language, enjoys listening to storybooks (may request favorites), pretends to read and write |
| 2 to 3 Years | Expands their vocabularies to about 1,000 words, puts together 2-4 word spoken sentences, chooses favorite books to have read aloud, begins to count, becomes more interested in print (especially letters in their names), recognizes the difference between letters and drawings, begins to scribble making marks similar to letters |
| 3 to 4 Years | Enjoys listening to and talking about storybooks, understands print carries a message, may try to read and write, can identify familiar signs and labels, participates in rhyming games, may identify and try to use some letters and letter sounds |
| 4 to 5 Years | Orally communicates with friends, recognizes and writes numbers from 0 to 10, enjoys rhyming, saying nonsense words and jokes, uses words to identify shapes, colors, numbers, street names, and other things associated with daily life, knows how books are held and read and follows print from left to right, top to bottom when listening to stories, recognizes the shapes and letters of the alphabet and may know some sounds associated with the letters, can write the letters in their own names |
(Information gathered from Reading Rockets)
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The School Years: Goals for each grade
| AGE | LANGUAGE AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT STAGE |
| Kindergarten | Develops concepts of print (understands left to right top to bottom orientation of words in books), begins to experiment with reading and writing, enjoys being read to and can retell what they heard using descriptive language, recognizes letters and letter-sounds, becomes familiar with rhyming and beginning sounds, can match spoken words with written ones, begins to write letters and high frequency words |
| First Grade | Begins to read simple stories with reasonable fluency, can read and retell familiar stories, learns to use strategies when comprehension breaks down, uses reading and writing for varying purposes, uses letter-sound associations, word parts, and context to decode new words, identifies an increasing number of sight words, begins to use punctuation and capitalization |
| Second Grade | Reading becomes more fluent using strategies more efficiently for comprehension and identification of unknown words, increases number of known sight words, can write in more genres, uses common letter patterns for more accurate spelling, can punctuate simple sentences and proofread their own work, uses reading to research topics, can read for pleasure and enjoyment |
| Third Grade | Reads fluently and enjoys reading, uses strategies efficiently and automatically for comprehension and unknown word identification, can recognize and discuss information and elements of texts, makes connections with their reading, writes different genres (poems, stories, informational), uses extensive vocabulary in writing and reading, can revise own writing throughout the writing process, spelling is correct in final drafts |
(Information gathered from Scholastic and Phases of Reading“)
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Developing Good Readers from Birth to Age 8 