• Begins to develop awareness that sentences, and then words, come apart
  
  
• Shows an interest in the sounds of language: repeats and plays with sounds, especially rhymes
  
  
• Identifies ten alphabet letters, most likely from his or her own name
  
  

Breaks spoken words into syllables (such as today=to-day)


Begins to sound out words, sees that each letter has a different sound


Recognizes and names a growing number of letters

• Compares whether two spoken words rhyme:
  Do cat and hat rhyme? Do hop and mat rhyme?
  
  
• Names a word that rhymes with a simple word like cat or make
  
  
• Recognizes and names just about all upper- and lower-case letters
  
  

Continues to progress in breaking spoken words apart


Identifies which of three spoken words or pictures begins with the same first sound of a given word–given the word "car," the child can select the word with the same beginning sound in this grouping: dog, cat, mat


Can pronounce the beginning sound in a word


Names all the letters of the alphabet


Begins to decode simple words


Recognizes a growing number of common words by sight
(you, my, the)


Uses inventive spelling to write words


Writes his or her own name (first and last) and the names of family members and/or pets

• Can say the word that remains if given sound is taken away from the beginning or end of a word—when asked to say "bat" without the "b," she says "at"
  
  
• Blends the sounds in three-phoneme words—when asked, "what do the sounds m, aaaa, and n form?", answers man
  
  
• Reads aloud with accuracy and comprehension any text that is meant for first grade
  
  
• Links letters to sounds to decode unknown words
  
  
• Recognizes by sight common irregularly spelled words, which do not follow the pattern of a word family, such as have, said, where, two
  
  

• Begins to learn strategies for breaking multisyllabic words into syllables
  
  
• Accurately reads some multisyllable real and nonsense words, such as Kalamazoo
  
  
• Reads and comprehends fiction and nonfiction meant for second grade
  
  
• Begins to read with fluency–reads accurately, smoothly, rapidly, and with inflection
  
  
• Represents the complete sound of a word when spelling
  
  
• Reads on his own voluntarily
  
  

Uses knowledge of prefixes, suffixes, and roots to infer meaning of words


Reads longer fiction selections and chapter books


Summarizes the main points from readings


Correctly spells previously studied words


Uses a dictionary to learn the meaning of unknown words

Reads to learn


Reads for pleasure and for information