Learning+to+read



**__Learning to read__**
Learning to read can begin at birth when Mum’s and Dad start reading books aloud, the learning continues throughout the development years at home up until school (Hill 2006). So when children reach school some may have an understanding of some words, letters, names things that are common to them. Learning to read at school generally has four development stages these are emergent, early, transitional and extending (Hill 2006).

=__Emergent__= Within the //emergent// reading phase children begin to read for meaning while attending to directionally, they will also do word-to-word matching, as well as read known words and locate new words. They also begin to pay close attention to print (Hill 2006).

Some examples of book's that have features suitable for this phase are: (Hill 2006)
 * Direct match between text and illustration
 * High- frequency words
 * The word count ranges from 0 to 50
 * Simple story line
 * Range of punctuation
 * Familiar oral language like structures

=__Early__= During the //early// phase children start to build on from the emergent phase by slowly increasing the complexity of concepts in the texts, syntax and vocabulary (Hill 2006). Some examples of book's with features suitable for this phase are: (Hill 2006)
 * Concepts are familiar
 * More text types are used
 * The text length increases
 * There are longer sentences
 * Different syntactic patterns
 * More of the story is carried in the text
 * Illustrations still offer support but this is beginning to diminish
 * The placement of text on the page varies

=__Transitional__= In the //transitional// reading phase children are heading towards becoming more fluent and they are beginning to show a wider repertoire of problem-solving strategies (Hill 2006). Some examples of book's features suitable for this phase are: (Hill 2006)
 * The books at the level begin to deal with topics that increasingly go beyond children’s experiences
 * There is a range of fiction and information texts
 * The sentence length and syntax varies
 * The layout and placement of text varies
 * There are diagrams, other graphic features and a variety of illustrations
 * The conceptual load is increased

=__Extending__= Books suitable for the //extending// phase encourage students to integrate information from multiple sources and to also read fluently. Some examples of features within book 's suitable for this phase are: (Hill 2006)
 * There are more complex stories and a greater conceptual load is required
 * Narratives have more complex plots and characters
 * More information details in information texts
 * There is a larger variety of text types
 * Less illustrative support is provided
 * Use of more complex text features
 * Text varies in sentence length and structure

Learning within junior primary years is the explicit core focus of most school curriculum's (Rose 2005), but it needs to become important in all curriculum's throughout all children's schooling. Without the basic skills of these four concepts of learning to read it is very hard for children to learn to read later in life.