LitHubAZ
Effective Literacy Practices

Literacy Standards

The following indicators outline the developmental benchmarks and literacy behaviors that most children display at a particular age/grade. All are aligned with guidelines and standards established by the Arizona Department of Education. Seen together, they show the progression of development over time, but it is important to remember that all children develop at a different pace and follow varied patterns of development.

For very young children, key components of language and communication development include modeling conversations, book handling, and picture/story comprehension. For preschool and K-3 students, indicators of developing language and emergent literacy provide a clear overview of the learning goals to be achieved by the end of each year. Across the higher grades, indicators may have similar wording, but they are to be applied with increased focus to progressively more challenging texts and tasks.



Reading Standards for Literature

  • Reads purposefully and actively.
  • Asks and answers key questions about a text, such as who, what, when, where, why and how.
  • Retells stories, focusing on the main idea.
  • Uses key details to describe the characters, setting, and major events in a story.
  • Identifies who is narrating the story.
  • Applies strategies to generate and answer questions about words and phrases in a text to determine meaning.

Reading Standards for Informational Text

  • Asks and answers questions about the world around them.
  • Retells key details of an informational text, focusing on the main idea.
  • Uses the illustrations in a text to help explain its main idea.
  • Identifies and uses text features such as headings, tables, glossaries, and icons.
  • Identifies reasons an author gives to support an idea.

Reading Standards for Foundational Skills

  • Recognizes and orally manipulates sounds; orally blends phonemes to produce single-syllable words.
  • Blends sounds to read written words with accuracy and fluency.
  • Reads and recognizes sight words(emphasis on words decoded with increasing automaticity, rather than rote memorization), word endings, and different syllable types.
  • Decodes regularly spelled words in isolation and in text.
  • Reads grade-level material aloud with appropriate speed, accuracy, precision, and expression to support comprehension.
  • Applies strategies (e.g., self-question, self-correction, reread) to clarify meaning of words in text.

Writing Standards

  • Writes opinion and explanatory pieces, supplying reasons to support ideas.
  • Writes stories with sequenced events and details that indicate what happened in the story.
  • Participates in shared research projects.
  • Recalls information from experience or learning to answer a question.
  • Explores digital tools for effective communication.
  • Generates ideas for writing from reading stories, poems, and informational texts.
  • Make connections across content areas into the world around them.

Writing Foundational Standards

  • Writes all upper and lowercase manuscript letters to communicate ideas.
  • Uses correct spelling for words, allowing others to understand written work.
  • Correctly spells frequently-used words.
  • Applies phonetic knowledge when writing.

Speaking and Listening Standards

  • Listens actively.
  • Participates in discussions with peers and adults.
  • Asks and answers questions about texts and presentations to clarify understanding.
  • Integrates reading skills to present ideas, thoughts, and feelings in a variety of ways.

Language Standards

  • Uses a variety of nouns, verbs, and adjectives to express ideas.
  • Produces and builds on complete sentences.
  • Capitalizes dates and names of people.
  • Uses common, proper, and possessive nouns; verbs; adjectives; prepositions; and conjunctions.

Source: Arizona Department of Education, Arizona English Language Arts Standards

Related

Find recommended instructional strategies and practices aligned with the science of reading by age/grade level and foundational literacy skill.

Evidence-based reading interventions support students who are identified as struggling with specific foundational literacy skills.

Evidence-based core curricula, interventions, and supplemental programs play a critical role in supporting students’ reading success.

While seemingly effortless, good reading is made up of a set of complex skills and strategies.