Reading, writing, spelling, and handwriting are the foundation tools of literacy. They can be seen, heard, and measured. They are portable. But unless these language/literacy tools are in place by the end of third grade, children will have no firm academic ground on which to stand. Nothing else learned in school will ever make up for the deficit.

School officials should be able to document how students are learning the skills listed below, and make the information available to parents in an understandable way. Mastering the tools of learning in language, and becoming confident in their use, requires systematic instruction across grades, and lots of supervised practice in applying these tools to reading and writing.

Whatever else a school claims to teach, if students don’t master the foundation skills of language, nothing else really matters. Following are baseline performance skills in language that must be learned in grades K-3. These skills are what every child of normal sight, hearing and intelligence should be able to do, and what the school must be prepared to measure. Advanced skills and creativity are built on this foundation. Without these foundational skills, many children will experience a lifetime of reading frustration.

• Each school should have a written curriculum for language arts readily available for any parent who requests it;

• The curriculum should stress rigorous, measurable, academic performance standards;

• Each grade’s skills should build on the skills taught in the preceding grade. Children acquire foundation skills best when their teachers coordinate instruction across grades;

• The classroom atmosphere should be calm and well organized;

• Instructional materials should be keyed to the academic goals for each grade. Textbooks provide a stable structure for continued learning across the grades;

• Teachers should have objective documentation for how their students are mastering the foundational skills. Without continuous monitoring children can easily lose their way, and so can their teachers;

• Master, not just exposure, is the goal for learning foundational skills;

• Teachers should be able to explain, in simple, direct terms, what children are expected to learn in the grade that comes before, and in the grade that follows their own;

By the end of first grade students should, at a minimum

• Know all the sound(s) for every individual letter in the alphabet

• Know the sounds for the common consonant digraphs (e.g., th, ch, sh)

• Begin learning the sounds for the common vowel combinations (ai, ee, ea, oa, ay, er, or, ar)

• Know how to apply this knowledge to sounding out words of one or more syllables;

• Immediately recognize and read the small set of irregularly-spelled words common to all first-grade reading material;

• Read first-grade material never seen before with fluency, near complete accuracy, without needing pictures or having to guess at unfamiliar words;

• Retell stories read independently;

• Print all upper and lower-case letters accurately and legibly, and apply what has been taught about the letter-sound system to spell words accurately;

By the end of second grade a student should, at a minimum

• Know and apply the approximately 35 vowel letter-sound combinations that drive virtually all syllables in the language;

• Immediately recognize and read and spell accurately the small set of irregularly spelled words common to second-grade texts;

• Know how to apply the knowledge learned in grade one of sounding out multi-syllable words;

• Read and write second-grade material never seen before with fluency, near complete accuracy, and without needing pictures or having to guess at unfamiliar words;

• Identify such story elements as setting, character, and story line;

• Identify the central idea in a reading selection;

• Use what has been taught about the letter-sound system to spell words accurately and legibly;

• Write simple stories, letters and reports with correct spelling, proper grammar and good handwriting;

By the end of third grade, a student should, at a minimum

• Read and write the 44 letter-sound combinations learned in first and second grade to a point of automaticity;

• Know the approximately 70 ways to spell the 44 sounds learned in the first two grades, and how to apply them in the reading and writing process;

• Know how to apply this knowledge to analyzing polysyllabic words, including prefixes, suffixes, and root words;

• Read third grade material never seen before with fluency, near complete accuracy, and without needing pictures or guessing at unfamiliar words. This should be objectively measured;

• Read fiction and non-fiction, and explain in writing, story events and characters;

• Revise written papers for clarity, and edit for correct grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling and handwriting accuracy;

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