Early Literacy

Colorado’s Literacy Landscape

Reading by the end of the third grade is widely acknowledged as a critical milestone for all students. Success in later grades and other subjects all depend on a strong foundation in basic literacy skills. Between Kindegarten-3rd grade is when students develop the reading skills that will enable them to succeed in fourth grade and beyond. When students cannot read at grade level by the end of third grade, they are much more likely to struggle in all of their classes.

When students cannot read at grade level by the end of third grade, they are much more likely to struggle in all of their classes.

Where do
Colorado Students
Stand?

Although Colorado students have performed slightly higher on reading test than students in many other states, their scores are still below pre-pandemic levels.

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Is Your Child On-Track

How do you know your child is on-track? See how your child is doing with key reading skills with the help from our friends at Be a Learning Hero. Click on your students grade level below to check.

On-Track Readiness(Required)

KINDERGARTEN

1st Grade

2nd Grade

3rd Grade

4th Grade

Kindergarten

Your student can name letters and match letters with their sounds.
Student can play around with language, rhyming, clapping out, or counting syllables.
Student is beginning to identify beginning, middle, and end sounds in spoken words.
Student is able to sound out and print simple words by hand.
Student is able to use a combination of drawing, talking, and printing to answer a question or describe an event from a book.

1st Grade

Student can accurately piece together and write words with short and long vowels.
Student can identify, spell, and correctly use simple grammatical words that tie together sentences (i.e. a, to, the, are, is, etc.).
Student is comfortable asking and answering questions about what they have read.
Student is able to print neatly and legibly.

2ND GRADE

Student can write complete sentences with minimal errors.
Student can read at grade level comfortably, at a rate of roughly 70-130 words per minute.
Student can show and share something that they learned from what they read in a book.

3RD GRADE

Student can read grade level texts; and read 80-140 words per minute.
The student can read and write longer words correctly and understands how to use prefixes (letters added to the beginning of a word) and suffixes (letters added to the end of a word).
Student can write complete sentences and simple paragraphs with mostly correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

4TH GRADE

Student can write complete sentences and paragraphs about what they are reading with mostly correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.
Student can confidently read at grade level, at a rate of around 90-140 words per minute.
Student can use context clues to determine what a text is describing.
Student is able to identify synonyms and antonyms for common words in text.

Check here to see the readiness roadmap for grades 5-8

4 things you can do right now to support your child with reading

Although Colorado students have performed slightly higher on reading test than students in many other states, their scores are still below pre-pandemic levels.