Overview of Chall's Stage 3

Understanding Chall's Stage 3 of Reading Development.

Grade 3 students, typically aged 8 and 9 years old, are at a unique place in their literacy development especially when comparing the two frameworks aforementioned.

The Balanced Literacy Diet’s “healthy plates” of literacy suggest that Grade 3 students are in Stage 3 of literacy development. This stage is formally called Literacy for Growth. In this stage, learners use the skills they have developed in the previous stages to learn new things. During Stages 0, 1 and 2, students develop specific skills and build their confidence in literacy. When they reach Stage 3, they are ready to apply what they have learned. Through research and reflection, learners engage in the application process and apply their reading and writing to deepen their knowledge and understanding. As students transition into Stage 3, instruction becomes more heavily focused on students’ comprehension and writing processes, and involves higher-order thinking skills. Although other literacy food groups are still required for students’ healthy literacy development at this stage, comprehension and writing processes make up more than half of Stage 3 learners’ nutritional needs. These two food groups serve as the “main course” while “side dishes” include Knowledge Building, Oral Language and Vocabulary, and Spelling and Word Study, and “desserts” include Text Structures and Genres, and Reading Fluency and Expression.

Contrastingly, Chall’s (1996) stages of reading development suggest that Grade 3 students are still in Stage 2, titled Confirmation and Fluency, which confirms what has been previously learned rather than acquiring new information. During this stage, students work to develop fluency by reading familiar books and utilizing decoding strategies, context and sight words (Chall, 1996). Similar to the Balanced Literacy Diet’s Stage 2 of reading development, Chall’s (1996) Stage 2 is characterized by children increasing their familiarity and comfort with reading and writing through direct skill instruction and a large amount of reading. In this stage, students begin to reflect on reading materials and engage in an increased amount of writing, however; the emphasis is still on decoding rather than meaning (Chall, 1996).

The inconsistency between the two frameworks may be a result of the range of growth and progress at this age. While students generally enter Stage 3 in Grade 3, they are only in the very early stages of the stage. As with everything, some students may transition quite quickly into Stage 3 learning while others may take the entire year to get to a point where they are successfully able to begin reading and writing for growth. As a result, it is important to keep in mind that, although technically a Stage 3 environment, Grade 3 classrooms should continue to involve elements of both Stage 2 and Stage 3 learning to meet the needs of most students. The transition to Stage 3 should be very thoughtfully planned and carefully implemented to ensure the students’ success. Luckily, the “healthy plates” of literacy detailed by the Balanced Literacy Diet are quite similar for Stages 2 and 3 containing many of the same food groups and placing the most emphasis on writing processes and strategies and reading comprehension. Aside from the portions which are truly quite similar, the only difference between the two stages is the presence or absence of the writing conventions food group (present in Stage 2, absent in Stage 3).

Keeping both the Balanced Literacy Diet’s Stage 3 and Chall’s Stage 2 in mind when developing a literacy program for Grade 3 students is important.