Original source · Published Oct 2023 · Updated Oct 2023

Reading Standards for Literature

The following standards offer a focus for instruction each year and help ensure that students gain adequate exposure to a range of texts and tasks. Rigor is also infused through the requirement that students read increasingly complex texts through the grades. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year's grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.

Key Ideas and Details

RL.K.1

With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

RL.K.2

With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details.

RL.K.3

With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

Craft and Structure

RL.K.4

Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.

RL.K.5

Recognize common types of texts (e.g., storybooks, poems).

RL.K.6

With prompting and support, name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

RL.K.7

With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear (e.g., what moment in a story an illustration depicts).

RL.K.8

(Not applicable to literature)

RL.K.9

With prompting and support, compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories.

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

RL.K.10

Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.

Reading Standards for Informational Text

Key Ideas and Details

RI.K.1

With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

RI.K.2

With prompting and support, identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.

RI.K.3

With prompting and support, describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text.

Craft and Structure

RI.K.4

With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.

RI.K.5

Identify the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book.

RI.K.6

Name the author and illustrator of a text and define the role of each in presenting the ideas or information in a text.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

RI.K.7

With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the text in which they appear (e.g., what person, place, thing, or idea in the text an illustration depicts).

RI.K.8

With prompting and support, identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text.

RI.K.9

With prompting and support, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures).

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

RI.K.10

Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.

Reading Standards: Foundational Skills

These standards are directed toward fostering students' understanding and working knowledge of concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, and other basic conventions of the English writing system. These foundational skills are not an end in and of themselves; rather, they are necessary and important components of an effective, comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend texts across a range of types and disciplines. Instruction should be differentiated: good readers will need much less practice with these concepts than struggling readers will. The point is to teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know—to discern when particular children or activities warrant more or less attention.

Note: In kindergarten, children are expected to demonstrate increasing awareness and competence in the areas that follow.

RF.K.1

Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.

RF.K.1.A

Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.

RF.K.1.B

Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.

RF.K.1.C

Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.

RF.K.1.D

Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

Phonological Awareness

RF.K.2

Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).

RF.K.2.A

Recognize and produce rhyming words.

RF.K.2.B

Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.

RF.K.2.C

Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words.

RF.K.2.D

Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words.[^1]

RF.K.2.E

Add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words.

[^1]: This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/. Words, syllables, or phonemes written in /slashes/ refer to their pronunciation or phonology. Thus, /CVC/ is a word with three phonemes regardless of the number of letters in the spelling of the word.

Phonics and Word Recognition

RF.K.3

Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

RF.K.3.A

Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.

RF.K.3.B

Associate the long and short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.

RF.K.3.C

Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).

RF.K.3.D

Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.

Fluency

RF.K.4

Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.

Writing Standards

The following standards for K-5 offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Each year in their writing, students should demonstrate increasing sophistication in all aspects of language use, from vocabulary and syntax to the development and organization of ideas, and they should address increasingly demanding content and sources. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year's grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades. The expected growth in student writing ability is reflected both in the standards themselves and in the collection of annotated student writing samples in Appendix C.

Text Types and Purposes

W.K.1

Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is . . .).

W.K.2

Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.

W.K.3

Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

Production and Distribution of Writing

W.K.4

(Begins in grade 3)

W.K.5

With guidance and support from adults, respond to questions and suggestions from peers and add details to strengthen writing as needed.

W.K.6

With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

Research to Build and Present Knowledge

W.K.7

Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., explore a number of books by a favorite author and express opinions about them).

W.K.8

With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

W.K.9

(Begins in grade 4)

Range of Writing

W.K.10

(Begins in grade 3)

Speaking and Listening Standards

Comprehension and Collaboration

SL.K.1

Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

SL.K.1.A

Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others and taking turns speaking about the topics and texts under discussion).

SL.K.1.B

Continue a conversation through multiple exchanges.

SL.K.2

Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood.

SL.K.3

Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something that is not understood.

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

SL.K.4

Describe familiar people, places, things, and events and, with prompting and support, provide additional detail.

SL.K.5

Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail.

SL.K.6

Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly.

Language Standards

Conventions of Standard English

L.K.1

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

L.K.1.A

Print many upper- and lowercase letters.

L.K.1.B

Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs.

L.K.1.C

Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/ (e.g., dog, dogs; wish, wishes).

L.K.1.D

Understand and use question words (interrogatives) (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how).

L.K.1.E

Use the most frequently occurring prepositions (e.g., to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, with).

L.K.1.F

Produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities.

L.K.2

Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

L.K.2.A

Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I.

L.K.2.B

Recognize and name end punctuation.

L.K.2.C

Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes).

L.K.2.D

Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.

Knowledge of Language

L.K.3

(Begins in grade 2)

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

L.K.4

Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on kindergarten reading and content.

L.K.5

With guidance and support from adults, explore word relationships and nuances in word meanings.

L.K.5.A

Sort common objects into categories (e.g., shapes, foods) to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent.

L.K.5.B

Demonstrate understanding of frequently occurring verbs and adjectives by relating them to their opposites (antonyms).

L.K.5.C

Identify real-life connections between words and their use (e.g., note places at school that are colorful).

L.K.5.D

Distinguish shades of meaning among verbs describing the same general action (e.g., walk, march, strut, prance) by acting out the meanings.

L.K.6

Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts.

Texts Illustrating the Complexity, Quality, and Range of Student Reading

Literature: Stories, Drama, Poetry:

Informational Texts: Literary Nonfiction and Historical, Scientific, and Technical Texts:

[^†]: Children at the kindergarten and grade 1 levels should be expected to read texts independently that have been specifically written to correlate to their reading level and their word knowledge. Many of the titles listed above are meant to supplement carefully structured independent reading with books to read along with a teacher or that are read aloud to students to build knowledge and cultivate a joy in reading.

Note: Given space limitations, the illustrative texts listed above are meant only to show individual titles that are representative of a wide range of topics and genres. (See Appendix B for excerpts of these and other texts illustrative of K-5 text complexity, quality, and range.) At a curricular or instructional level, within and across grade levels, texts need to be selected around topics or themes that generate knowledge and allow students to study those topics or themes in depth. On the next page is an example of progressions of texts building knowledge across grade levels

Exemplar Texts on the Topic: The Human Body

Students can begin learning about the human body starting in kindergarten and then review and extend their learning during each subsequent grade

The five senses and associated body parts

Taking care of your body (hygiene, diet, exercise, rest):