Childrens reading.

There is a debate on which method should be used when teaching children how to read. These methods are:

Look and say,
Children learn the shapes of words instead of breaking them down phonologically. They recognise the whole word or sentence, children are normally presented with a card that has the word on and will most likely have a picture that relates to the word so as to help them link them together.

Phonics/synthetic phonics,
This is the breaking down of words and understanding the sounds of each letter and then combining them to create a word. Normally the caregiver will start with simple words such as 'dog' and then develop onto more complex words such as 'eat'. The child will need to know the alphabet before using the phonics method.
This method however has been criticised as the English language has many different ways to pronounce a sound that may be spelt the same (eg: cough, through, ect.).

Jeanne Chall identified six stages of reading development. She studied children from toddlers to age 18. She found is interesting that our motivation for reading changes.

Stage	Description	Age (years)	Key Characteristics
0	Pre-reading and pseudo-reading	Up to 6	'pretend' reading, turning pages, repeating stories. some letter and word recognition predicting single words or the next stage of a story
1	Initial reading and decoding	6-7	Reading simple texts containing high frequency lexis. Estimated 600 words understood
2	Confirmation and fluency	7-8	Reading texts more quickly accurately and fluently. Pay attention to meanings of words and texts. Estimated 3000 words understood
3	Reading for learning	9-14	Reading for knowledge and info. becomes motivation
4	Multiplicity and complexity	14-17	Responding critically to what they read and analysing texts
5	Construction and reconstruction.	18+	Reading selectively and forming opinions about what they have read.

 

Reading schedules.
They are purposely staged in different levels of difficulty to help children stretch and aquire lexical and semantic knowledge and grammatical understanding. The aim to build children's confidence and show examples of things such as good behaviour and politeness strategies which helps children develop pragmatic understanding.

Key features:
Lexical repetition
Syntactical repetition of structures
Simple verbs
One sentence per line
Anaphoric referencing
Limited use of modifiers
Text image cohesion

http://www.parentdish.co.uk/kids/how-your-child-will-learn-to-read-at-school-and-what-you-can-do-to-help-reading-at-home/
http://www.theschoolrun.com/school-reading-schemes-explained
http://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading101
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19812961
http://www.education.com/reference/article/reading-development-stages-Chall/