IST 605: The Stages of Literacy: Emergent through Advanced

The Emergent Literacy Stage starts when a child is of preschool age and extends through the beginning of first grade (IMSE, 2015), however, not all children will start this stage simultaneously, nor will they exit this stage uniformly, either (Carver, 2023).  Most scholars recognize that pre-literacy and emergent literacy overlap slightly, which occurs between the stages of development when children obtain the most basic literacy skills during infancy and toddlerhood and when they start to acquire the skills that enable them to begin the process of formally learning how to read and write during the early primary school years (Carver, 2023).  

How rapidly a child develops pre-literacy and emergent literacy skills depends on a variety of factors, including whether the child was read to during infancy and toddlerhood (Carver, 2023; Maryville University, 2022), whether they went to preschool or stayed home (Carver, 2023), and the educational level of the parents or caregivers who spend the most time caring for children (Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness at Penn State, 2020).  The educational level of parents and caregivers influences the quality and quantity of the interactions between young children and their caregivers, with those caregivers who are more highly educated spending more time interacting with their babies and toddlers and using more complex or sophisticated vocabularies in contrast to those caregivers with lesser levels of educational attainment (Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness at Penn State, 2020). 

During the emergent literacy stage, children display a number of characteristics that indicate that they are progressing along the literacy continuum.  For example, children develop an interest in books and how to handle them; they begin to notice printed words and how they are arranged on the page; they start to explore the letters of the alphabet, although they may not be able to recognize or name them all until the end of the emergent stage; they understand that the printed word represents the spoken word, and that spoken words have meaning; and they expand their vocabularies and begin to learn how to describe events and objects and to tell stories (Carver, 2023). 

Additionally, rudimentary writing skills emerge during this stage.  Children will scribble and draw, start to write letters, and learn how to spell and write their own names (Carver, 2023).  Their printing abilities will commence in rough form during late pre-school or early kindergarten, and by the time they enter the second grade, they will have become more refined and capable of communicating information in written form (Carver, 2023).  

Canadian Children's Literacy Foundation, 2023)

Parents, caregivers, and teachers can support young children's literacy development in a multitude of ways.  

• Speaking to the child frequently with natural intonation (use rising inflection for questions; lower inflection for statements)
• Engaging in regular conversation and interactions surrounding play
• Building vocabulary
  • Naming things associated with daily life
    • Foods
    • Clothing items
    • Household items
    • Vehicles
    • Animals (and the sounds they make)
  • Repeating high-frequency words and phrases 
  • Continue to introduce basic vocabulary in conversation
    • Focus on new and interesting words easily understood in context (Fountas & Pinnell, 2022).
      • Numbers
        • Counting higher than in the previous stage (up to 20)
        • Use manipulatives or pictures that correspond with the amount represented by each number
      • Letters
        • Use the child's name to introduce familiar letters
        •  ABC books (pictures correspond with letters) 
      • Colors
      • Shapes
      • Named objects
      • Simple adjectives
      • Simple adverbs
      • Conjunctions (and, but, so, because) 
• Having children tap out the syllables in speech so they can recognize the individual sounds 
  • Apply this strategy when reading by pointing to the words and the parts of the words as they are being spoken/pronounced
• Continue to read with the child. 
  • Choose books with content appropriate for the child's cognitive and social/emotional development (Fountas & Pinnell, 2022)
  • Select books that have simple text sequences (first, next, then last) and contain content that stimulates and engages the child's natural curiosity and emotions (Fountas & Pinnell, 2022)
  • Have children make predictions for what they think will happen next in a storybook (Fountas & Pinnell, 2022)
  • Emphasize that you're reading the text to them, not the pictures (Fountas & Pinnell, 2022)
  • Orient children to how text is read -- book right side up, read from left to right, top to bottom (Fountas & Pinnell, 2022)
  • Have children repeat what they hear you read and join in on saying repetitive words and phrases (Fountas & Pinnell, 2022)
• Practice letter formations
  • Reinforce alphabetic learning with writing skills
  • Have children trace how to form a letter based on a template
    • Capital 
    • Lowercase
  • Repetition is key until letter fluency is achieved 
• Practice writing simple two- or three-letter words that correspond with pictures if possible
  • Pay attention to how letters are spaced
• Write out simple sentences to show how to combine words
  • Pay attention to the spacing between words in a sentence.
  • Capitalization rules
  • Simple punctuation