A Developmental Continuum of Pre-reading Goals

To sum up my points so far: Reading is important. Learning to read is difficult for many children. Reading outcomes in elementary school for low-income children can be predicted strongly from their pre-reading abilities. It follows that we should consider ways to enhance children's pre-reading skills. In doing so, it will be important to consider the vast developmental differences that exist among children of different ages within the preschool period. The needs of a toddler are quite different from those of a four-year-old, and thus successful programs and interventions will have to differ for different ages and stages of growth and development.

Here is a preliminary breakdown of the appropriate goals or targets for intervention at different ages.

Infants and toddlers:
     Emotional bonding
     Pleasure in book interactions
     Sound of parents' voice

Two- and three-year-olds
     Vocabulary and concepts
     Book knowledge
     Narrative understanding

Four- and five-year-olds
     Print knowledge
     Phonological sensitivity
     Letter-sound correspondence
     Emergent writing

The arrows on the figure mean that the goals of one developmental period don't cease when the next developmental task begins. Thus positive emotional experiences around books, which should begin for infants and toddlers, shouldn't stop when children reach two or three years of age and need to start learning acquiring vocabulary and concepts.

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