Jeanne S.

Chall’s Stages of Reading Development:

Stage 0. Pre-reading: Birth to Age 6.
The pre-reading Stage is where the learner grows in their control of language, both semantics and
syntax. The child is increasing their conceptual knowledge and beginning to develop an
understanding of the world around them. The learner relies on their non-visual information and
contextual knowledge to begin reading. During this emergent stage the child relies heavily on the
contextual information provided by the pictures in the text and by the way the story mimics the
spoken language and highly predictable language. The learner during this stage uses logographic
information to make guesses about words. The learner also begins to develop insights into the
nature of words and begins to realize that words are made up of sounds, and that some of these
words have the same beginning and ending sounds. This phonetic-cue phase of reading
development helps the child begin to recognize rhyme and alliteration. For the reader to be
successful at this stage of learning they need to have many learner centered activities that
encourage the learner to experiment with language and to have an opportunity to make the
connection between their non-visual information and the visual information of the text. A top
down approach to teaching reading, which follows a whole language model of reading, has
shown positive gains in reading performance for the stage 0 reader.

Stage 1. Initial Reading, or Decoding Stage: Grades 1-2.5, Ages 6-7.

Once the learner is successful in stage 0 and has progressed from the phonetic-cue phase of
reading and is becoming more aware of letter/sound relationships the learner has now progressed
into the cipher phase of reading and is a Stage 1 reader. During this Stage, the reader often relies
heavily on the text and focuses attention on visual information. The child begins gluing to print
and sounding out words. Even words that were easily recognized in stage 0 may now be sounded
out by the stage 1 reader. The Stage 1 reader is attempting to break the code of print. They
realize that letters and letter combinations represent sounds. They also become aware of vowels
and vowel sounds. To this child decoding is extremely important. A bottom up approach to
teaching reading may be more appropriate for this Stage of development. Teacher directed
modeling and instruction on the aspects of decoding is crucial during this stage. This is the one
stage where whole language may not be the best approach for the instruction of reading.

Stage 2. Confirmation, Fluency, Ungluing from Print: Grades 2-3, Ages 7-8.
The job of the teacher is to keep the learner in perpetual forward movement. Once the child has
become successful at the aspect of decoding it is time to progress forward. No teacher desires a
child to be a word caller, or a reader who glues to text. A good reader is a fluid reader, who
automatically decodes words, thus freeing up attention for higher levels of comprehension and
meaning. As the child progresses through stage 1 they acquire orthographic knowledge of words.
They recognize patterns of words and reach a level of automaticity in word recognition. This
new- found ability enables the reader to become more fluent. Chall often refers to this stage as
"more of the same". In other words the learner needs the opportunity to hone the skills of reading
in comfortable text and comfortable reading situations. Recreational reading that encourages safe
fluent reading. Carver calls this area of reading, RAUDING. This stage is not for gaining new
information or using reading to learn, but it is used to gain control of reading so that when they
become stage 3 readers they will be able to use the tool of reading to successfully gain
knowledge. Once again the reading emphasis switches to a more whole language approach. The

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learner should be given the opportunity to read many familiar texts. The greater the amount of
practice and the greater the immersion, the greater the chance of developing the fluency with
print that is necessary for the more complex nature of reading to learn.

Stage 3. Reading for Learning the New: Grades 4-8, Ages 8-14.
Stages 0-2 are considered the developmental stages of reading, "Learning to Read". Stage 3
however is associated with content area reading, or "Reading to Learn". Now the reader must use
reading as a tool for acquiring new knowledge. Before the child entered stage 3 of reading, the
child relied on the environment or the spoken word to acquire new knowledge, but as the child
enters stage 3 he/she must use reading to gain novel information. Stage 3 is also characterized by
the growing importance of word meaning, prior knowledge and strategic knowledge. In order to
acquire new information the learner must bring previous knowledge and experiences to their
reading. The reading in this stage is essentially for facts and the reader typically comprehends
from a singular viewpoint. Reading during this stage is seen to be both top-down and bottom-up.
Students need direct instruction, not necessarily in the aspect of decoding, but in strategy
activation and selection as well as comprehension monitoring. Many teachers make the false
assumption that just because the learner has learned how to read narrative text, this ability will
transfer over to successful reading or expository text and reading to learn.

Stage 4. Multiple Viewpoints: High School, Ages 14-18.

The essential difference between the Stage 3 reader and the Stage 4 reader is that the Stage 4
reader begins dealing with learning from multiple viewpoints. The successful Stage 3 reader
grows in their ability to analyze what they read and react critically to the different viewpoints
they encounter. When the learner becomes successful with this type of critical comprehension
they have progressed from Stage 3 to Stage 4. Stage 4 readers are able to deal with layers of facts
and concepts and have the ability to add and delete schema previously learned. This essential as
the learner now interacts with more complex texts that share multiple views and concepts.

Stage 5. Construction and Reconstruction - A World View: College, Age 18 and Above.
Upon the arrival into Stage 5 of reading the student has learned to read certain books and articles
in the degree of detail and completeness that one needs for one's purpose. A Stage 5 reader
knows what not to read, as well as what to read. During Stage 5 the reader has acquired the
ability to construct knowledge on a high level of abstraction and generality and to create one's
own "truth" from the "truth" of others. The more the learner is immersed into one's domain the
more conceptual knowledge the reader has obtained. With this sophisticated level of domain
specific knowledge the more critical the reader can become. They now have the ability to
synthesize critically the works of others and are able to form their own educated stance on the
subject.

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GUNNING’S STAGES:
In order to understand how strategy use might vary as students move from novice to expert, it is
helpful to look at the stages of literacy and the kinds of strategies that each stage demands.
Growth in literacy is continuous and complex, so the stages are a bit artificial. However, they
help focus attention on essential tasks faced by readers at various points.

EARLY EMERGENT STAGE

The emergent stage includes all those behaviors that lead up to conventional reading. Children
learn to handle books, learn that one reads print and not pictures, and that one reads from left to
right, and from top to bottom. Students also begin to learn where printed words begin and end.
When they “read” a book, children at this stage are usually constructing meaning from pictures.
When students do learn to read a few words, their reading is generally logographic (Ehri, 1994).
They make associations between a nonverbal visual aspect of a word and the spoken equivalent
of that word. The visual aspect is not a letter-sound relationship. For instance, to identify a
“McDonald’s” sign, they don’t sound out the M; they use the golden arches. To identify Crest,
they use the overall design of the label and their knowledge of what is in the tube. However,
since they are not reading letter-sound cues, they may “read” a Crest label as “toothpaste.”
Sometimes they seem to be using letter-sound cues but are not. Donald may recognize his name
when he sees it because it starts with a D. However, Donald is not aware that d represents the
sound /d/. If he encountered the word dog or doughnut, he would not be able to sound out the
first letter. Unable to use letter-sound relationships, students in this stage are limited to the use of
picture clues, context, or memory of word forms.

In writing, Donald may draw pictures, scribble, use wordlike figures, or use actual letters, but
again, the letters do not represent sounds (see PPT, dear EDTL 6260 Students). Donald may even
spell his name and a few other words correctly, but this will be because he has memorized the
spellings of the words. The emergent stage flows into the alphabetic stage as children discover
and begin to use the alphabetic principle.

ALPHABETIC STAGE
The hallmark of the alphabetic stage is the use of letter-sound relationships to decode words.
Typically, students first use initial consonants, then initial and final consonants, and finally all
the elements in a word. Because decoding skills are limited at this stage, students rely heavily on
picture clues or picture clues in combination with the initial consonant, especially in the
beginning of the stage. Reading a story that has an illustration of a dog and a cat and
encountering the word dog, the students can use their knowledge of initial d to figure that the
word is dog and not cat. Of course, if there are also a duck and a deer in the illustration, they will
be in trouble, unless they are able to decode final consonants.

As students progress through this stage, they use more parts of the word to decode it. Students
also begin to notice patterns in words. They begin to notice that the -e at the end of words like
hate changes the vowel sound so the word is hate, not hat. At some point, students begin using
elements longer than a single letter or sound. Instead of decoding hat, /h/, /a/, /t/, they see natural
patterns and decode /h/, /at/. As students begin using chunks of words rather than individual
letters, they move into the word pattern stage.

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Students’ progression through the alphabetic stage is often reflected in their writing, especially if
they use invented (developmental) spelling. Increasingly, the child’s writing incorporates the
alphabetic principle (Bear, Invernizzi, Johnston, & Templeton, 1996). In the earliest stages, a
single letter may represent a whole word: K for car. Later, the child represents the first and last
consonant sounds: KR for car. As the child progresses, she or he begins using vowels. Long
vowels are spelled with letter names: PET for feet. Fortunately for the inventive speller, the
names of the long vowels incorporate their sounds. Because short vowels do not have letter
names, many inventive spellers use the long-vowel letter name that is made in approximately the
same place in the mouth as the short vowel they are attempting to spell. Thus, short e is
articulated in the same place as long a so a student spells bed as BAD. This is known as the
“close to” tactic. Other “close to” spellings include spelling short i with an E (HEM for him),
short o with an i (HIP for hop), and short u with an 0 (MOD for mud) (Read, 1971). Short a is
generally spelled with an a.

For some consonant spellings, the spelling—sound connection is not apparent at first glance. For
instance, tr is frequently spelled ch, as in chain for train; and dr may be spelled JR as in JROM
for drum. To see why these spellings are logical from the child’s point of view, listen carefully as
you say chain and train. Did you notice that the beginning sound of train is very similar to the
beginning sound of chain? And if you say tree, it sounds like chree. (Temple, Nathan, Temple,
& Burns, 1993). In similar fashion, the d in dr has a /j/ sound, so drop may be spelled IRUP or
simply JUP During this stage, spellings with nasal sounds such as /m/ and /n/ are omitted when
they occur before a consonant, so that bump may be spelled B UP and bunk might be spelled

BUK. In general, students have difficulty with both initial and final clusters. The major
characteristic of this stage is that students write what they hear (Gentry, 1997). As students get
ready to move into the word pattern stage, they begin spelling short vowels and also begin
correctly spelling consonant sounds that they had misspelled. They also begin using double
consonants to represent sounds, such as II in words like hill and ck in words like pick (Hughes &
Searle, 1997).

WORD PATTERN STAGE

In the word pattern stage, which is generally reached by the end of first or the beginning of
second grade, students begin using final e markers (cape) and vowel digraphs (creep) to decode
words. They realize that cap, because it has a CVC pattern, is an article of clothing worn on the
head, and that e at the end of cape marks its pronunciation as an article of clothing worn over the
shoulders. They also use patterns such as at, ip, ight to decode words. Instead of decoding ship as
“sh-i-p---. ship,” they use the word’s pattern and decode it “sh-ip—-ship.” Having mastered most
short vowels in the alphabetic stage (hop, cut), students learn short-vowel patterns with clusters
or digraphs (drop, shut), final-e long-vowel patterns (ride, hope), digraph long-vowel patterns
(boat, steam), r-vowel patterns (fear, chair, store), and other-vowel patterns (coin, hour, soon).

Through encountering standard spelling in books and environmental print, children begin to
notice certain spelling conventions: train is spelled with tr; the ai in train and eat the end of a
word is a marker for a long vowel (rake). They begin to use visual features in addition to sound
features to spell words. Although their spelling is not always correct—in the early stages rain
might be spelled RANE and rake might be spelled RAIK—spelling is becoming more standard

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and incorporates such features as final-e markers and double vowel letters to spell long-vowel
sounds. They are also able to spell r-vowel (chair, here, bear,flr, turn) and other-vowel patterns
(tall, claw, caught, fruit, boot, noise, brook). The major characteristic of this stage is that stu-
dents visualize spellings rather than relying strictly on what they hear (Gentry, 1997). By the end
of this stage, they are able to spell most single-syllable words correctly. As they master single-
syllable patterns, students begin encountering a greater proportion of multisyllabic words that
incorporate these patterns and move into the multisyllabic stage. Although students show
increasing ability to write single-syllable words, they experience difficulty with multisyllabic
words, especially those that drop final e (hoping) or have double final consonants (stopping).

MULTISYLLABIC STAGE
Even the easiest materials contain some multisyllabic words. However, as reading material
becomes more difficult, the proportion and complexity of multisyllabic patterns increases. In this
stage, which usually begins in grade 3, students show gradually improving ability to decode
increasingly complex multisyllabic patterns. Student progress through easy inflectional syllable
patterns (jumping, helping), compound word patterns (sunset, baseball), and a variety of
multisyllabic patterns that incorporate single-syllable patterns they already know (butter, carpet),
plus patterns that occur only in multisyllabic words (action, impression).

In spelling, students show increased awareness of syllable junctures (the points such as
hop(e)ing, drop ped where syllables are joined.) Students learn when to double the final
consonant or drop the final e when an ending such as -ing is added (dropping, taking). They learn
that syllables that end in a consonant often have a short vowel (runner) and those that end in a
vowel often contain a long vowel (local), so that the a in baby is long, but the a in babble is
short. Students also apply their knowledge of the spellings of single-syllable words so that they
spell remain with an ai rather than an a and final e (remane). During this stage, students show
some initial awareness of prefixes, suffixes, and roots and gradually move into the morphemic
analysis stage.

MORPHEMIC ANALYSIS STAGE

As reading begins to incorporate a significant number of new concepts, students encounter an
increasing number of words that are not in their listening/speaking vocabularies. The ability to
use knowledge of prefixes and suffixes and root words to derive the meanings of unfamiliar
words becomes more important. In both their reading and spelling, students apply the principle
of meaning. They discover that words that have similar meanings have similar spellings even
though the pronunciations may be different. From a phonemic point of view, a better way to spell
sign would be SINE. However, g is retained to maintain the semantic connection between sign
and signature, so sign and signature both contain “sign” (Venezky, 1965). Although the g is not
articulated in sign, it is sounded in signature. In spelling, students learn how to use the meanings
of words to guide their spelling. Students are more likely to spell words such as composition and
contribution correctly if they realize that the affixed forms are based on compose and contribute.
At this stage students might have difficulty knowing whether to add able or ible to words such as
reason, adapt, or break to form reasonable, adaptable, or breakable. Average students enter this
stage at about the fourth-grade level and stay in it for the rest of their lives. You and I are in the
morphemic analysis stage.