0-12 Months –
- Begin to reach for soft-covered books
- Look at and touch the pictures in a book
- Make cooing or nonsense sounds to respond to a familiar story
- Helps turn pages
12-36 Months –
- Name familiar pictures such as dog, cup and baby
- Answer questions about what they see in books
- Pretend to read by turning pages and making up a story (24+ months)
- Recite the words to favourite books
- Recognise the cover of favourite books
3-4 years –
- Know the correct way to hold and handle a book
- Recognise that the words tell a story
- Understand that the words are read from left to right and top to bottom
- Start hearing rhyming words
- Retells stories
- Recognise about half the letters of the alphabet
- Recognise and “read” familiar labels, signs and logos
- Start matching letter sounds to letters
- Perhaps recognise their own name and other often seen words
5 years –
- Read some sight words
- Use story language and vocabulary in play and conversation e.g. “the dump truck is here”, said the guy
- Begin matching words they hear with words on a page
- Recognise and match letter to letter-sounds
- Identify the beginning and ending (and sometimes the middle) sounds/letters in words like cat or sit
- Sound out simple words
- Tell the who, what, when, where, why and how of a story
- Put a story in order either by retelling or ordering pictures
- Predict what happens next in a story
- Begins writing or dictation their own stories
- Sounds out new words using phonics or word families (such as adding the beginning sounds to at to read cat, bat, sat, hat)
- Starts reading or asks to be read books for information as well as entertainment
- Answers basic questions about what they have read
6-8 years –
- Recognises up to 200 sight words
- Uses context clues (pictures, surrounding words, topic-specific vocabulary) to decode unfamiliar words
- Go back and re-reads when a mistake has been made (self-correcting)
- Starts answering questions that requires them to think about what they have read
- Starts writing stories using inventive spelling
- Imitates the styles of favourite authors when writing
9-13 years –
- Makes the move from learning to read to reading to learn
- Reads with purpose (entertainment, information, directions etc.)
- Explores different genres
- Recognises words without hesitation
- Puts the events of a story in order
- Reads out loud with accuracy and inflection
- Identifies and articulates the main idea
- Summaries what has been read
- Understands similes, metaphors and other descriptive devices
- Finds meaning in what has been read
14-17 years –
- Relates events in stories to their own lives
- Compares and contrasts different reading materials
- Discusses character motivation
- Makes inferences/makes conclusions about a story
- Supports a thesis/idea using examples from a story
- Identifies examples of imagery and symbolism
- Analyses, synthesises and evaluates ideas from texts