January 25, 2025
Reading Practice in the Classroom
Though most of us don’t remember the early stages of learning how to read, literacy instruction is widely considered among the most critical components to education. After all, it provides a foundation for learning in all subjects. Reading is something many brains do automatically, so what scaffolded reading instruction actually looks like in a classroom might feel like a mystery. In a 2011 study of best practices in comprehensive literacy instruction, Gambrell, et. al. described reading education as practice in both receptive (listening, reading, and viewing) and expressive communication (speaking, writing, and describing). This means a well-rounded literacy foundation will contain all these elements.
This balanced literacy approach has been adopted by the Common Core State Standards, which is followed by the American public school system and many private and charter schools. These skills are organized and developed into elementary curriculum by experts in literacy instruction. Specific curriculum adjusts to the grades of students, their language development, and instructional needs, but on average, literacy practice in early elementary classrooms includes the following:
Kindergarten: The early stages of reading instruction include letter and sound identification, recognizing word “families” (like rhyming words), and introductions to “sight words,” which are small common words readers identify without sounding out, such as a, my, you, is, and are. Kindergarten-age readers should be printing letters and simple words, correctly answering questions and making predictions about the stories they hear, beginning to match spoken words with written ones, and are encouraged to use descriptive language to explain their ideas orally.
Grade 1: First grade will build on the reading skills introduced in kindergarten. Their sight word vocabulary should increase, as well as their ability to identify the number of syllables in words. First grade readers will practice reading by sounding out letters and forming words independently, and are simultaneously developing their writing skills by printing words and simple sentences. By the end of first grade, many students can independently read and understand short written instructions.
Grade 2: Second grade readers should have a big enough tool kit to read grade-level material relatively independently, including using their large sight-word vocabulary and letter-sound knowledge to decode longer words. They should be able to read with greater fluency and accuracy, which means many classrooms introduce independent reading time. Second grade readers will be able to recall increasingly complex ideas and information from text, and independently compose simple reports, letters, and stories.
Grade 3: At this stage of literacy development, students are reading longer books for greater periods of time, decoding multi-step instructions, and are using text and context clues to determine the meaning of words in paragraphs. They should be able to express their own ideas about characters and events in stories, conduct simple research, and understand basic non-literal ideas in text, such as analogy and metaphor. They should be writing more and in greater detail, and should be able to elaborate on their ideas and reasoning in written material. Spelling and grammar practice is a common focus in third grade classrooms.
Naturally, reading instruction goes well-beyond grade 3. By the time students reach upper elementary school, they are transitioning from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Here, literacy education shifts from developing their reading skills to relying on those skills to learn other content. This includes decoding longer and more elaborate text, making connections to abstract ideas, researching, writing creatively, and explaining their thoughts in more detail. Learn more about the reading to learn transition by checking out this blog post from Rally Reader!