Reading begins with phonics, which is the study of letter sounds and combinations. Students who reach short-term phonics goals will spell and read better because they will have the skills to decode words by sound. Short-term phonics goals should include the student learning consonant sounds and short and long vowel sounds. Once the students learn these, they can advance to letter combination sounds, such as "th," "ie" and "ea." Finally, students will be able to "sound out" entire words using their phonetic skills.
Students should learn to read and understand new and more complex words daily. For example, a language arts department may introduce three-letter vocabulary words in kindergarten and work its way up to lists of 12-letter words by fifth grade. Along with vocabulary lists, it is imperative that teachers help students learn lists of prefixes, suffixes and roots. Just as readers trained in phonics can decode the sounds of new words, readers trained in prefixes, suffixes and roots can decode the meaning of new words. This daily lexicon building will result in long-term reading comprehension and expository ability.
Students should begin their study of grammar by learning parts of speech and punctuation marks. After students grasp these definitions, the next goal should be to identify parts of speech and punctuation in a given sentence. Here the goal is more complex; students are combining their vocabulary with newfound grammatical information. Next, students should be asked to produce their own grammatically-correct sentences from a given list of words, and then finally from scratch. Isolate grammar lessons from handwriting, since students often understand sentence construction and punctuation before they are able to neatly write sentences.
Many studies document the need for handwriting instruction during the elementary years, considering paper and pencil use comprises most activities regardless of subject matter. Elementary students therefore must be taught first how to print, then how to write in cursive. Printing instruction should include proper lower and uppercase letter formation, number formation, spacing and orientation -- that is, students should not reverse numbers or letters.
Once students are able to print words, sentences and paragraphs with proper capitalization, punctuation and indentation on grade-appropriate paper, their next goal is to learn these same skills in cursive.