A text—whether it is on a sign or in a book—is central to reading. The texts in school can be thought of as a diet for beginning and struggling readers. To get a good start in reading (or restart, in the case of struggling readers), texts need to give students core and critical information about written language. TextProject is the premiere site for information on appropriate texts for beginning and struggling readers.
What should kindergartners be able to read?
Many educators and parents are asking this question in response to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In many states, the CCSS represent the first standards where kindergartners are expected to be reading conventionally.
The foundational standard states that kindergartners should be able to “read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.” (p. 16). The kindergarten texts given to illustrate Standard 10 (p. 32) include ones with readability levels of second grade. The expectation of the CCSS is that children should be able to read conventionally by the end of kindergarten.
The CCSS’s rationale for increased text levels is the claim that K-12 texts have been “dumbed down” over the past 50 years. If high school students are to be college and career ready, CCSS writers believed that text levels needed to be accelerated at all grade levels, beginning with kindergarten.
There are two problems with this assumption. First, kindergarten texts cannot have been dumbed down over a 50-year period because, until No Child Left Behind, kindergarten texts were not part of the core reading programs, which form the mainstay of American reading instruction. Second, research shows that an earlier start does not increase average levels of fourth graders, much less ensure college and career readiness for high school students. Indeed, an earlier start widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
What research does show is that kindergartners need exposure to many, many texts—texts that are read to them, texts with which they can follow along, and texts that they can hold in their hands and examine. For the kindergartners whose first book experiences occur primarily in school, these “on-my-own” texts should be ones that represent familiar concepts and have regular letter-sound matches. That is why, in BeginningReads—the program that TextProject offers for free download—texts begin with familiar, concrete words that have regular letter-sound matches. Steadily, students are introduced to more and more letter-sound patterns in words representing familiar, concrete concepts. In BeginningReads, students learn to read with cats and dogs, seeds and trees, beaks and feet, and snow and coats.
What kinds of books should teachers read aloud to beginning readers?
The read-alouds within CCSS-oriented early primary-level classrooms aren’t just “any” book. The read-alouds of kindergarten and first-grade classrooms should be carefully chosen for their content and the quality of language.
There are literally thousands of outstanding books from which teachers can choose and the recommendations on the Internet for outstanding books are many—and can be confusing. The question of what should be read becomes especially critical when considering the precious hours of classroom time for students whose primary literacy experiences occur in school. Time is precious and knowledge is extensive.
What follow are several principles for choosing read-alouds which ensure that both the world knowledge and the literary knowledge of kindergartners and first graders are enhanced.
As these examples show, narratives continue to have a critical place in CCSS early childhood classrooms. But at the same time, there are many informational texts with compelling language, which lay a foundation for students’ life-long engagement with texts as a source of knowledge and enjoyment.
What texts should children be able to read at the end of kindergarten in the Common Core era? First-grade?
The answer to this question differs for kindergartners and 1st graders, as is evident in the Common Core State standards. Neither K nor grade one is included in the staircase of text complexity but the exemplar texts for K-1 which appear in the Standards and Appendix A give an indication of expectations for these levels.
For kindergarten, texts for independent reading are wordless picture books such as Pancakes for Breakfast or picture books with words in signs or on objects (e.g., trucks). Text complexity expectations, beginning at grades two-three, have been increased with no justifiable empirical foundation. But at kindergarten entry, an artificial standard has not been set which all young children must scale. Young children learn at different rates and also come into school with vastly different prior literacy experiences. Some kindergartners have had many prior school-like literacy experiences at home and are ready to move along the staircase of core vocabulary (see below). But, for the children whose primary literacy experiences occur in school, the Common Core has not placed an arbitrary level for them to achieve.
For first-grade, the prototypical texts for independent reading in the Common Core exemplars are Hi! Fly Guy (a story) and Starfish (an informational text). On the staircase of core vocabulary which appears in the figure above, Hi! Fly Guy and Starfish are on the fifth step of the staircase—facility with the 1,000 most frequent words and decoding skills with words of five or fewer letters. This level is a reasonable expectation for first graders and mirrors the expectation for end-of-first-grade reading in an assessment such as DIBELS.
There is reason to be concerned, however, for the students whose literacy occurs primarily in school and who have not reached the end-of-grade one benchmark. In light of the upping of the ante in text levels in the grade two-three span, many first graders may be pushed to reach the Hi! Fly Guy level. For those students who don’t reach this expectation (but could if given a little leeway in second grade), negative evaluations about their reading capacity may be prematurely made—with dire consequences.
TextProject's new BeginningReads program supports teachers, parents, and tutors in bringing children into reading. Before children learn about written language, they have developed a substantial oral language word bank. The goal of BeginningReads is to connect student’s oral language knowledge with written language. All ten levels (of 12 books each) are available now.
This report examines the difficulty of early reading texts over the years as measured by today's prevailing indices.
Hiebert, E.H. & Pearson, P.D. (2010). An Examination of Current Text Difficulty Indices with Early Reading Texts (Reading Research Report 10.01). Santa Cruz, CA: TextProject, Inc.
11 June 2010
25 May 2011
Beginning readers need substantial and consistent data about language they are learning.
17 June 2010
Any text written in English is decodable at some level in that the code never deviates from the alphabetic system. However, the degree to which the letter-sound correspondences within words are common or consistent can vary considerably.
4 June 2010
If you were 6 years old between 1930-1967 in the U.S., there is a high likelihood that this text was the first of your school career.
4 August 2010
Might it be that the immunization effort of the past decade in early reading education has contributed to problems that are far more serious than word recognition ever was? Might it even be that students’ word recognition is, in fact, quite good and that it is their background knowledge and engagement in reading that is the real problem?
15 December 2010
7 November 2006
Hiebert, E.H., Martin, L.A. & Menon, S. (2005). Are there alternatives in reading textbooks? An examination of three beginning reading programs. Reading & Writing Quarterly 21(1), 7 – 32.
7 November 2006
Hiebert, E. H., (2005). The effects of text difficulty on second graders’ fluency development. Reading Psychology, 26(2), 183-209.
30 August 2011
Hiebert, E.H. (in press, August 5, 2011). Curious George and Rosetta Stone: The Role of Texts in Supporting Automaticity in Beginning Reading. In T. Rasinski, C.L.Z. Blachowicz, & K. Lems (Eds.), Teaching Reading Fluency: Meeting the Needs of All Readers. (Vol. 2). New York: Guilford Press.
18 February 2003
20 November 2001
Hiebert, E.H. (2002). Textbooks and Model programmes: Reading Reform in the United States. In R. Fisher, M. Lewis, & G. Brooks (Eds.), Raising standards in literacy. (pp. 157-174) London: Falmer Press.
20 November 2001
Hiebert, E.H. (2005). State reform policies and the task textbooks pose for first-grade readers. Elementary School Journal,105, 245-266.
Paper was also presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA.
5 April 2007
Hiebert, E.H., & Mesmer, H. (2005). Perspectives on the difficulty of beginning reading texts. In S. Neuman & D. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Early Literacy (Vol. 2, pp. 935-967). NY: Guilford.
8 March 2007
Hiebert, E.H. (1999). Text matters in learning to read. The Reading Teacher, 52, 552-568. [Augmented with foreword in N.D. Padak et al. (Eds.), Distinguished educators on reading (pp. 453-472). Newark, DE: IRA.]
5 May 2003
This study examined the effectiveness of a little book curriculum in facilitating the independent reading skills of first-grade readers. The curriculum was based on a theoretical model that identified two critical dimensions of text-based support for beginning readers: linguistic content and cognitive load.
Menon, S. & Hiebert, E.H. (April 2003). A Comparison of First Graders’ Reading Acquisition with Little Books and Literature Anthologies. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 22, 2003 in Chicago, IL.
4 April 2002
Hiebert, E.H., & Fisher, C.W. (2007). The critical word factor in texts for beginning readers. Journal of Educational Research. 101(1), 3-11. Paper was also presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA
30 May 2006
Hiebert, E.H., & Fisher, C.W. (2006). Fluency from the first: What works with first graders. In T. Rasinski, C.L.Z. Blachowicz, & K. Lems (Eds.), Teaching Reading Fluency: Meeting the Needs of All Readers. (pp. 279-294). New York: Guilford Press.