Of the six stages of reading development hypothesized by Chall, the first two stages are most significant for understanding a child’s reading development from the beginning. Stage 0 is referred to as the prereading stage from birth to age six. During this stage, children who are live in a print-rich environment learn that some words have similar beginnings and endings, some words rhyme, and some words have parts that can be separated or blended. They listen to stories read aloud and gain meaning and organization for writing. The processing style is “top-down” because of the elementary word perception skills a child has for reading. A child might know letters and he might know words when he rereads; however, he more than likely sees the words as whole rather than as letters. Children are able to do “psuedo-reading” or what some call pretend reading relying on prediction and memory skills. The emphasis is on meaning because there are decoding skills have not yet been developed, and the focus begins with the message and moves to the print medium. In regards to instruction at Stage 0, most children, unless they have special needs, do best in an open, unstructured environment. Chall does not believe that Stage 0 is real reading because she believes real reading starts when you are attending to the letter sounds. For this reason, she gives it a zero.
    In Chall’s stages of reading development, Stage 1 is called the Initial Reading or Decoding Stage ranging from grades one to two or from ages 6 to 7. This stage builds on the skills, attitude, and knowledge the child acquires in Stage 0. At this stage a child is learning the sound/symbol relationship of our alphabetic language, that is they learn an arbitrary set of letters and begin to associate these letters with the corresponding parts of spoken words or sounds. This stage involves moving from guessing and memory used in Stage 0 to making sounds in which there seems to be “grunting and groaning.” A child discovers that spoken words consist of a finite number of sounds. At this point, reading depends more on the reader than on what is read because the child is glued to print. He doesn’t know enough about the print yet to leave the print. Biemiller’s study of first grade children learning to read by sight words found these three phases that fit into Chall’s Stage 1: (1) word substitution errors, (2)increase in nonresponsiveness and more errors with letters that have a graphic resemblance, and (3)a greater concern with graphic exactness but a return to meaning. At Stage 1, the reader has to now know enough about print to leave the print. Instruction at this stage should be more specific and systematic; therefore, the learning environment would be structured and the lessons direct. The processing style takes on a “bottom-up” approach where the child moves from letters to words for word recognition and from literal to interpretive reading comprehension skills. The reader’s attention is primarily on the medium and less on the message since the emphasis at this stage is on decoding. Children need previous knowledge of words and syntax, and they prefer to read orally at Stage 1.
    A balanced kindergarten program can help a child move from Stage 0 to Stage 1. It should build on what the child already knows about language and print so that it is meaningful. Reading in kindergarten language arts program needs to include speaking, listening, and writing. Children need to be encouraged at their first attempts in reading and writing, and procedures for evaluating children should be developmentally appropriate.
    Phonemic awareness is an essential developmental process that you can make happen in kindergarten though not naturally. Children need to leant that spoken words are made up of sequences of sounds and phonemes. They also need to learn to map letters or letter combinations to these phonemes. Phonemene awareness consists of three stages: (1)hearing beginning consonants, (2) hearing beginning and final consonants, (3) hearing beginning consonants, final consonants, and medial vowel. Hearing the sounds within word in important in matching letters to sounds, and this is why many children may have difficulty in beginning reading. There is a debate over whether phoneme awareness is a prerequisite to learning to read or if reading develops phoneme awareness. Knowing letters and sounds is good, but it won’t get them too far in reading. Phonemic awareness and segmentation in first grade is the number one predictor of learning to read, and I believe it may be strengthened using Big Books and LEA to teach a child to read.
    Language Experience Approach and Big Books are forms of contextual reading that can be used to bridge the gap between Stage 0 and Stage 1. Both approaches make use of a child’s natural language patterns to teach beginning reading, provide continual modeling by the teacher, use choral reading which minimizes the fear or threat of learning to read, and rely on memory and repetition to move the child along in reading. The language patterns of the two differ - LEA uses spoken sentence patterns and Big Books use written sentence patterns. Also, the experiences, shared classroom and literary, differ in the two approaches. Used effectively, they provide a much-needed balanced approach for kindergarten of “bottom-up” and “top-down.” Using LEA or dictated stories is a way of moving children into writing because they help children develop an understanding of book orientation and directionality, concept of word, beginning consonant letter-sound use, and sight word acquisition. In both, the teacher models literacy in operation.