During kindergarten, most young students will work on learning the alphabet and the different sounds that each letter makes. They will be read aloud to frequently and will start to form an understanding of letters and how they make up words and then sentences. While some advanced children may have an elementary grasp of reading in kindergarten, most will not fully understand and engage in the process until they reach the first grade. During this time, young readers develop "codes" for understanding difficult words. This can include sounding out a word, using context clues to decipher a word's meaning, or even asking an adult. Children of this age are naturally curious and will pick up new vocabulary everywhere. They also tend to enjoy writing and may experiment with writing their names and other commonly used words.
By the time they begin second grade, most children have developed a comprehensive system for understanding and reading a wide variety of words. Now, the focus shifts to reading comprehension, as students are ready to comprehend a full story rather than just the words that make up that story. Books with more difficult vocabulary and more complex plots can slowly be introduced throughout second and third grade. Ideally, by the end of second grade and definitely by the beginning of third grade, readers should be able to enjoy and understand small-chapter books. Other skills that should be gained during these grades include the ability to read silently in increments of at least 15 minutes, the ability to do research or other work based on the reading, self-correction, automatic reading of one- or two-syllable words, recognition of basic words with irregular spelling, the use of word-identification strategies, and the identification of the fundamental parts of a story.
By the time a student enters the fourth grade, basic reading skills are in place. During these two years, students work to sharpen those skills and become better, faster readers. Vocabulary increases greatly during this time period, and students learn to read more comprehensively, to understand antonyms, synonyms and homonyms, to understand compound words, to identify punctuation cues and graphic organizers, to understand the overall meaning of a passage, to understand the characters and their motivations within a story, and to summarize a story. By early fifth grade, students will know how to understand sequential directions within a text, visualize information they have read, identify with characters, compare and contrast characters in a story, or compare and contrast different writing styles, and understand cause and effect.
Sixth grade marks, for most students, the end of elementary school and the beginning of middle school. Sixth-grade readers should have all basic reading skills in place and should be able to enjoy and understand, on a complex level, more advanced literary works. They should be able to write analytically about what they read and should pick up a more adult vocabulary. From sixth grade on, these skills will only be increased and applied to more and more advanced and complex literary works.