1st Grade Reading Expectations

Parents and Teachers! Check out the skills children need in their grade!

Grade 1 expectations

Home support plays a critical role in a child’s academic success, especially during the early years when they develop foundational skills. By actively engaging in your child’s learning journey, you can reinforce what they are taught in school, boost their confidence, and help them develop positive learning habits. The resources here will empower you with practical tools to make learning fun, effective, and meaningful at home.

1. Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Master phonological and phonemic awareness. These activities can be done with eyes shut—no print should be in front of the child. Print and follow this! If children cannot hear and manipulate sounds in their heads, they won’t be able to read and spell!

Blending and segmenting are the most essential phonemic awareness activities because these skills directly correlate to reading and spelling. You can find these activities by following this link, but you can blend and segment any word! For example, ask your child to blend these sounds into a word:  /c/ /a/ /t/.  To segment, have your child separate the individual sounds. For example, the word “plant” can be segmented into the sounds /p/, /l/, /a/, /n/, /t/.

It would also be ideal to teach your child nursery rhymes. It is unfortunate that so many children no longer know these classic nursery rhymes. Rhyming helps children experience the rhythm of language, recognize sounds in words, anticipate what is coming next, and more! There are many cute free online videos of nursery rhymes, and the library has beautiful nursery rhyme books.

2. Letter Names, Letter Sounds, and Letter Formation

Master letter names and sounds. Get a set of flashcards— I like these because the uppercase and lowercase letters are on separate cards. Alternatively, you can make your own using index cards.

Correct letter formation is essential! You should form all letters from the top down. Not only are improperly formed letters visually unappealing, but they also hinder children’s writing speed, which can impact their performance in test-taking, creative writing, and note-taking. It will also affect their ability to learn cursive.

3. Phonics

Please read my Wilson Fundations page to learn about first-grade phonics expectations. Your child’s school may use a different curriculum, but all curricula tend to cover the same content.

4. Tapping, Blending, Spelling

Teach tapping out and blending three sounds to form consonant-short vowel-consonant words, or CVC words, such as bat, bit, tub, pet, pot. Here is an AMAZING activity! Watch the video clip below. (This is not my video.) Word lists are also below.

• Say it
• Stretch it
• Spell it
• Change it

Research indicates that decodable texts are the most effective way to learn to read.

Decodable text falls under the phonics approach of the science of reading. When students decode words, they break them down and figure out how to pronounce them. Teaching beginning readers how to sound out words is crucial for accurate reading and writing. 

• Always have your child read each story 3 times for fluency and accuracy.
• Having your child point to each word with 1:1 correspondence is essential because students tend to guess or memorize these simpler texts.
• Your child should be able to figure out unknown words independently by sounding them out. Not all words can be perfectly sounded out, but most words have at least parts that can!

When reading any text…

• No more than 10 errors per 100 words, including words you had to assist your child with, are acceptable.
• The child must also demonstrate comprehension. Grade 1 students should retell the story, connect it to their own lives or another book, and explain their favorite part along with the reasons why.
• Reading at an appropriate rate (words per minute) is essential. When fluency is achieved, comprehension can occur.

Words Per Minute for Grade 1 

To calculate words correct per minute, follow this formula.

___ words in the passage read correctly divided by ___ seconds it took to read X 60 = __ WCPM

For example, say your child read 207 words correctly. The child read it in 3 minutes and 25 seconds, which is 205 seconds. 207 divided by 205 is approximately 1.0 words per second x 60 = 60 WCPM!

What Counts as an Error?

• Mispronounced words

• Skipped words

• Words read out of order

• Substitutions

• Words not self-corrected within 3 seconds

Do NOT count:

• Repetitions

• Self-corrections (if within a few seconds)

This table shows the approximate percentile ranks for correct words per minute at two points during the school year. The average first grader should read 29 words correctly per minute in the winter and 60 words per minute in the spring.

* WCPM = Words Correct Per Minute

6. Master Sight Words

Master a few sight words each day. First graders should know the pre-primer (pre-kindergarten), primer (kindergarten), and grade 1 sight words in isolation. These are best learned in context. They should read, reread, and reread:

For more practice, write each pre-primer, primer, and first-grade sight word in your own simple sentence for your child to practice reading.

Here are more sight word stories.

7. Vocabulary for 1st Graders

1st graders must know the meaning of these words, taken from the Marzano list.

1st graders must know the meaning of these words, which were taken from  WORDS TO KNOW BY GRADE LEVEL.

8. Spelling 1st grade science of reading

Grade 1 students should be able to spell the Dolch sight words for the preprimer, primer, and Grade 1 levels. Additionally, refer to step 3 above to practice spelling words that incorporate specific phonetic elements.

9. Are you looking for a tech option?

10. Read Aloud or Listen to Online Texts—Put the Closed Captioning On

Read aloud more complex books to your child, or have your child listen to books online—not decodable texts—on topics they enjoy to instill a love of reading, improve listening comprehension, and grow vocabulary. First-grade reading and listening comprehension are based on:

1st grade reading expectations

Here are Grade 1 Common Core State Standards question stems you can use as discussion starters with your child, but make talking about books fun! However, the CCSS is used in the classroom.

We administer the free DIBELS 8 test 3 times a year. Each section is a 1-minute test:

• Name letters. The upper and lower case are mixed up on a sheet of paper.
• Segment individual sounds heard in a word; for example, “apple” is /a/ /p/ /l/ and “holes” is /h/ /o/ /l/ /z/. If the child can correctly segment apple and holes, that is 7 sounds.
• Read 3-letter short vowel nonsense words. These can be sounded out, for example, “sil,” “tob,” “paj,” “zev,” and “nud.” The goal is for the child to recognize these chunks automatically.
• Read actual words—sight words.
• Oral reading fluency: Can the child read 39 words correctly in a story with at least 91% accuracy by the end of the school year?

The minimum scores to pass: Here are other free literacy assessments to assess your child!

Copyright 05/04/2012

Edited on 07/08/2025

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