Intended Use

Improving student outcomes requires a commitment to evidence-based strategies and high-quality instructional practices that provide the targeted support each student needs.

Literacy impacts every aspect of academic achievement across all subjects, including science and math. That’s why learning to read proficiently is a student’s most important educational challenge.

This resource is an update and expansion of Read On Arizona’s Developing a Thriving Reader From the Early Years: A Continuum of Effective Literacy Practices. It includes more extensive recommendations for evidence-based instructional practices from birth through third grade, when children must build foundational language and literacy skills, as well as grades 4-12, when the need for skilled reading dramatically increases.

The literacy standards presented here align with the guidelines and standards established by the Arizona Department of Education, which provide a framework for literacy learning goals for each age/grade. The instructional strategies and practices — organized by age/grade level and related foundational literacy skills — are supported by the wide body of established, rigorous research into how skilled reading develops and the most effective ways to support children, including struggling readers, in learning to read. 

This tool is not intended as a stand-alone curriculum or program, but rather to complement evidence-based core reading curricula and intervention programs already in place and help educators fill in gaps or modify their approaches with effective strategies to support the development of foundational literacy skills.