The Key Reading Skills & The Steps in Acquiring Them
Learning to read is an exciting time for children and their families. While thrilled by their children's emerging literacy and reading skills, many parents are surprised to learn that reading is not automatic and that, regardless of family background, children require support in learning to read and developing strong reading skills. Most adults forget that acquiring reading skills required skilled instruction.
A language-rich environment forms a solid foundation on which reading skills including decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension are based. Mastery of decoding comprises understanding print concepts, phonemic awareness and phonics and is usually attained by the end of second grade. Some skills, such as vocabulary development, will grow as long as children are challenged by involvement in a rich language environment and by tackling increasingly complicated texts.