I sat on the couch with my five-day-old baby girl in my lap, filled with anticipation. I had chosen the perfect first book to share with her, and promptly by page 3 of Sandra Boynton’s Moo Baa La La La, my little darling was fast asleep. As a reading teacher, I naturally had high expectations for what I envisioned to be the beginning of a rich literate life.  I had at least expected a more captive audience.

Over the past two and a half years, my daughter has not only increased her stamina to stay awake through an entire book, but has developed oral, comprehension, and book-handling skills to slowly and steadily move toward “real” reading.  I have been witnessing firsthand the emergent stage of reading development with pride and awe.  During this first stage of reading development, from birth to about age 5, young children understand that one reads the print and not the pictures, interact with books by commenting and asking questions, and begin to recognize letters and repeating or rhyming sounds.

Around age 6, I can expect to say goodbye to the pretend readings and memorized recitations that delight me now, as beginning reading becomes more rooted in print. At this age, kindergarteners and first graders learn to use letter-sound relationships, or phonics, to decode words, as well as automatically recognize a bank of sight words, add to their vocabulary, and begin to internalize the structures of stories, poems, and informational text.

Once children have developed the skills to decode the words on a page, their reading becomes increasingly fluent, sounding more like speech, and the types of books they are able to read and understand become more complex in structure and content.  Now that children are expending less energy to figure out new words, their brains are freed up to focus more completely on the meaning of the text, allowing second and third graders to make inferences, ask questions, and summarize information while reading independently.

Watching my little one settle into her comfy chair with a stack of books lights up my face every time – her literacy life is blooming and I can’t wait to see what she learns next!

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Megan Gregory is a doctoral student in Literacy and Language at Boston University’s  School of Education with a focus on young students reading informational text. She currently works as a reading specialist in the Scituate Public Schools and has also taught first and second grade. To contact Megan to learn more about her work email [email protected].