These pages contain a guide to the eight stages of reading development and how to support your child. Each step has a description of that stage of reading as well as tips on how to support child's reading development. It is important to remember that reading is a highly complicated skill, using multiple strands that come together to create a skilled reader, and each child will progress differently. This scale is simply a guide, and a child may progress in different areas at different rates.
The basics are – to make time for reading, model reading, and talk to your child about their reading. If you are unsure of which questions to ask please see the suggestions below.
The scales have been taken from The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education along with additional suggestions from the librarians, Mrs V Fielding White and Mrs D Payne.
Area |
Example Questions |
Information Retrieval (checking they are understanding what’s on the page) |
Where did …. go on this page? Who are the characters we’ve met so far? What did this character do? What does this character say? |
Inference (checking they are picking up on clues and reading beyond the text) |
Why do you think the character did this? How do you think the character is feeling at this point? Why do you think the character said this? How does this compare to how they were feeling earlier? |
Predicting (trying to guess what’s going to happen in the future of the book) |
What do you think will happen next? How do you think this will make the character feel? How do you think it’s going to end? |
Summarising (briefly saying what’s going on) |
What’s happened so far? What’s happened on this page? |
Application (applying what’s going on in the story to themselves) |
Can you relate to how this character is feeling? Would you have made the same decision? Why/why not? Do you know anyone like that? |
Synthesis (how well can they explain how the book fits in the wider categories) |
What genre(s) does this book fit into? How do you feel about the ending of the book? Would you change anything? Why? |
Evaluation (allows them to work out what they like/don’t like each time) |
How effective do you think the writing is? How would you compare this to….? Could this happen in reality? |