How Children Read

Children begin to understand and establish reading skills during their early school years (from approx age 4). PUSH and PULL signs are simple ways in which children familiarise themselves with new words connected to the meanings. In addition to this, children then grasp company logos such as McDonald's or LEGO, could this relate to the colour used in the name?

Baby and toddler books contain a lot more colours and pictures to label objects particularly based around themes or topics known to them, e.g. animals, clothes, weather. Early story books are designed to be read to children as opposed to being read by the children themselves. They tend to consist of complicated words to them and grammatical structures that children are able to understand, even though they are unable to read them or use them in everyday speech.

Jerome Bruner - LASS theory (Language Acquisition Support System) in children's reading:
Parent- child interactions with books as four-phrased:
1) Gaining the attention of the child - on a picture
2) Query - asking the child what the object in the picture is
3) Label - telling the child what the picture is
4) Feedback - (positive or negative reinforcement) responding to the child's utterance

As children grow older, they seem to become more aware of written texts and learn to be able to reflect on relationships between different symbols and have cohesion with different parts interconnecting. Children begin to understand how story books are structured with page numbers, chapter titles and a contents/introduction. The ways in which children's books are set out are particularly interesting and are done in such a way that is effective from a child's perspective to make them want to read it over-and-over again. The characters tend to be very significant (e.g. a mouse and a fox) which are usually local topics to do with animals etc. The use of direct speech is more apparent, along with the types of pictures and phonological devices. There always seems to be a typical hero, prey and predator which are stereotypical characteristics. 

The Biff and Chip books all consist of the same characters, animals and setting which creates a relationship with the children and makes them interested when they understand what they are reading. The two key strategies used in British learning to teach children to read are 'Look and say' and the phonics which seem to be most effective.

Bibliography

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/how-do-children-learn-read
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20944072
CGP A2 English Language revision guide