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
- Understands key ideas, characters, events, and setting in a story or poem.
- Asks and answers questions about stories and poems, such as who, what, when, where, why and how.
- Retells key details from a story or poem.
- Asks and answers questions about unknown words in a text.
- Identifies the beginning, middle, and ending of a story with prompting and support.
- Derives meaning of words based on how they are used in a sentence.
- Makes predictions based on title, cover, illustrations, and text.
Reading Standards for Informational Text
- Asks and answers questions about the world around them.
- Retells key details from an informational text.
- Distinguishes the key features in an informational text.
Reading Standards for Foundational Skills
- Understands the organization and basic features of print.
- Recognizes and orally manipulates sounds.
- 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) and different syllable types.
- Uses phonics to write words and expresses thoughts and ideas in writing.
- Reads sight words (emphasis on words decoded with increasing automaticity, rather than rote memorization) and decodable texts with simple decodable words.
- Identifies upper-and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
Writing Standards
- Uses a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to craft texts with different purposes.
- Explores digital tools for effective communication.
- Generates ideas for writing from reading stories, poetry, and informational texts.
- Makes connections across content areas into the world around them.
Writing Foundational Standards
- Writes upper and lowercase manuscript letters to communicate ideas.
- Separates simple words into their syllables.
- Writes letters to represent the sounds heard in words.
- Writes frequently-used words.
Speaking and Listening Standards
- Listens actively.
- Speaks in complete sentences for effective communication.
- Shares ideas with peers.
- Asks and answers questions to clarify understanding.
- Tells or retells personal experience or a creative story in a logical sequence.
Language Standards
- Uses common nouns and verbs.
- Pluralizes words by adding “s” or “es”.
- Recognizes and names end punctuation.
- Sorts common words into categories.
- Asks and answers questions about unknown words.
- Uses words and phrases learned from conversation and readings.
Source: Arizona Department of Education, Arizona English Language Arts Standards
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