Adapted from Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz

Early Preschool Accomplishments (age 3-4)

• 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

Late Preschool Accomplishments (age 4-5)

• 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

Beginning Kindergarten Accomplishments (age 5-5½)

• 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

End of Kindergarten Accomplishments (age 5½-6)

• 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

First Grade Accomplishments (age 6-7)

• 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
  

Second Grade Accomplishments (age 7-8)

• 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

Third Grade Accomplishments (age 8-9)

• 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

Fourth Grade and Above Accomplishments (age 9)

• Reads to learn
• Reads for pleasure and for information