This chart offers a general outline of the milestones on the road to reading, and the ages at which most kids reach them.
Keep in mind that kids develop at different paces and spend different amounts of time at each stage. Early intervention is the key to helping kids who struggle with reading — if you have concerns, talk to your child's doctor, teacher, or the reading specialist at school.
Infancy (Birth to Age 1)
Children usually begin to:
- Imitate sounds they hear in language
- Respond when spoken to
- Look at pictures
- Reach for books and turn the pages with help
- Respond to stories and pictures by vocalizing and patting the pictures
Toddlers (12 to 36 months)
Children usually begin to:
- Answer questions about and identify objects in books — such as "Where's the cow? What does the cow say?"
- Name familiar pictures
- Pretend to read books
- Finish sentences in books they know well
- Scribble on paper
- Know names of books and identify them by the picture on the cover
- Turn pages of board books
Early Preschool (Age 3)
Children usually begin to:
- Explore books independently
- Listen to longer books that are read aloud
- Retell a familiar story
- Recite the alphabet
- Scribble in a line to look like words
- Imitate the action of reading a book aloud
Late Preschool (Age 4)
Children usually begin to:
- Recognize familiar signs and labels
- Make up rhymes or silly phrases
- Recognize and write some letters of the alphabet
- Read and write their names
- Notice letters or sounds that begin words
- Match some letters to their sounds
- Use familiar letters to try writing words
Kindergarten (Age 5)
Children usually begin to:
- Understand rhyming and play rhyming games
- Begin to match some spoken and written words
- Understand that print is read from left to right, top to bottom
- Write some letters and numbers
- Recognize some familiar words
- Predict what will happen next in a story
- Retell stories that have been read to them
First and Second Grade (Ages 6 and 7)
Children usually begin to:
- Read familiar stories
- Sound out unfamiliar words
- Use pictures and context to figure out unfamiliar words
- Use some punctuation in writing
- Correct themselves when they make a mistake while reading aloud
Second and Third Grade (Ages 7 and 8)
Children usually begin to:
- Read longer books independently
- Read aloud with proper emphasis and expression
- Use context and pictures to help identify unfamiliar words
- Correctly use punctuation and spell some words
- Write notes, like phone messages and email
- Enjoy games like word searches
- Use new words, phrases, or figures of speech that they've heard
- Revise their own writing
Fourth Through Eighth Grade (Ages 9 to 13)
Children usually begin to:
- Explore and understand different kinds of texts, like poetry and fiction
- Identify parts of speech and devices, like similes and metaphors
- Correctly identify major elements of a story, like plot
- Read and write for fun
- Analyze texts for meaning
From the health and parenting
experts at KidsHealth.org.
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