Beginning readers belong to the first stage of reading, early emergent readers. They begin learning foundational elements by recognizing the alphabet and their sounds. It is typical for early emergent readers to learn isolated initial consonants of words first that are easiest to pronounce such as b, c and h. Next, they move on to short vowel sounds. Early emergent readers then begin to string together consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. Rhyming (CVC) vocabulary or recognizable words that a child already has been exposed to draws out and connects memory skills, such as c-a-t, h-a-t and b-a-t. At this earliest stage, initial consonants and three-letter words supported with pictures help to link letters with their associated sounds, promoting easier memorization.
Second-stage emergent readers have a strong grasp on understanding the alphabet and their associated sounds or phonological awareness. A child now is able to manage sounds at three levels. One level consists of the understanding of syllables or that there are different sound units in word that stand alone with one or more vowels, such as read/ing. The next level consist of onsets and rimes, understanding rhyming words--such as bat and sat--that have the same exact final sound with different initial letters. The third level is phonemic awareness, recognizing letters and words begin with different sounds and can be blended together to create different words. In addition, discriminating words beginning with the same letter but pronounced differently, words such as car and chair, for instance, according to Learning A-Z.
In the early fluency stage, reading becomes somewhat more natural. A child now begins learning to understand what he is reading and can describe passage context. He is using and recognizing larger vocabulary with longer sentences. He now applies the reading skills learned in the earlier stages. He does not spend much time on discriminating letters-sound associations and word structure. He is more independent of sounding out words and stringing sentences together. So, more time is spent reading the text and comprehending meaning.
The last stage of the reading stages refers to fluent readers. A child has now learned how to read and now reads to comprehend context and concepts, building her knowledge of different subjects. Vocabulary and texts are at a higher level at this stage, but a child now naturally uses all her reading skills. She will cognitively reference back to the earlier learned reading stages when needed. A child will demonstrate deciphering new vocabulary alone, determine her own opinions about abstract concepts and continues to build higher levels of comprehension.