Developmental Model
The development of early literacy competencies begins at birth and proceeds through different levels and phases of skill acquisition and accomplishments. Evidence from a number of sources were used to develop the model shown below. The model for describing the early literacy development of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, birth to five years of age, is presented below.
| Months | Developmental Levels (Phases) | Selected Accomplishments |
|---|---|---|
| 0-15 | Prelanguage and Early Nonverbal Communication Development | Joint attention, intent to communicate, gestural communication, babbling, mutual vocal play, language/speech preception, phoneme speech stem acquisition |
| 12-30 | Language Onset and Vocabulary Development | First words, vocabulary development, language use, semantic development, early comprehension |
| 24-42 | Language Growth and Emergent Literacy Development | Phonological awareness of sounds, morphological awareness, syntactic development, pragmatic skill acquisition |
| 36-48 | Early Literacy Development and Metalanguage Awareness | Phonological, morphological and syntactic growth, prewriting, pretend reading, story telling |
| 48-60 | Literacy and Reading and Writing Development | Phonology refinement, complex syllable use, invented spelling/writing, shared reading |
