the stages of learning to read

[Aranea]

I'm just suddenly feeling a bit ignorant about how children learn to read. My dd1 is in reception and very keen to read. She reads every day to me at bedime and is on ORT level 3 which she is finding fairly easy. But she doesn't scan ahead yet, so is not all that fluent.

How does the next stage happen? Is it just to do with practice? Is it connected with learning the spellings of words as well? I just wonder because she isn't getting any spellings home from school to learn and I wondered if it would help her reading. Or maybe it doesn't work like that.

Does anybody know more about the theory of this? Or where I can find more information? I'm partly interested in how I can help her, and partly just interested in an abstract way.

Not sure of the mechanics of it, but I think that it is the reading which helps spellings rather than the other way around.

I've helped out at school for 4 years now listening to readers, and at some point they all seem to hit a kind of wall, where they can read the level they are on okay, but are not really fluent. This can go on for a while, then suddenly, they just 'get it' and race ahead again.

The more they read, the better they become, the better their spelling is and the better their writing will be.

There is a 'Teach your child to read' book out there somewhere - that might have more about the theory.

Thanks, that's really interesting. I'll have a look for the book.