Stages of Reading: Reading Apprenticeship

Reading to children in this stage is still an important activity and you should continue with any previously established story time. Allow your kids to join in on the actual reading of the book at this stage. Make reading trade-offs and deals. Offer to read one page and they can read another. Have them read the last word, sentence or paragraph on each page. Allow them to read the first or last page of each chapter. Let them chose the book or books for your story reading time. Try to encourage reading books they might still find too difficult to read alone. In particular the classic tales are great to share in this stage. This way you can discuss any words or aspects of the story together which may be still too difficult for them to fully grasp.

A certain level of predictability is needed in books for this age group. As they are also coming to terms with comprehension and not just the mechanics of identifying words and letters. Take care the story isn't too predictable, though. Your child may find the expected outcomes a touch boring, so be willing to begin more books than they'll actually get through. Series books are good at this stage. The familiar characters are already established in the minds of young readers. They can move onto the actual unfolding of the particular plot or story they are reading. Many publishing houses have some kind of series suitable for readers at this stage.

Even though there should be occasional harder words for your child to untangle, there shouldn't be too many of them on one page. Pictures are still necessary as they break up the text. A page full of text alone can intimidate even a more confident reader. Pictures and illustrations also add to their understanding of certain aspects of the story they might find difficult to see using their imagination. This is especially the case in some stories with historic or even futuristic settings. Illustrations might also suggest subtle humour which might not be present in the text alone. Good books for this stage are still should still be fun to read. Check out some of the suggested reading titles in Recommended Reading.