Building the Foundation: A Suggested Progression of Sub-Skills to Achieve the Reading Standards--Foundational Skills in the Common Core State Standards
Author: Kosanovich, Marcia
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Academic Standards,State Standards,Reading Skills,Basic Skills,Reading Instruction,Phonological Awareness,Phonics,Word Recognition,Reading Fluency,Kindergarten,Elementary Education,Grade 1,Grade 2,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 5

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative is a state-led effort that establishes a set of clear educational standards for English language arts and mathematics that states can voluntarily adopt. The standards have been informed by the best available evidence and the highest standards across the country and the world. They have been designed by a diverse group of teachers, experts, parents, and school administrators. The CCSS includes the Reading Standards: Foundational Skills (K-5). These standards foster students' understanding and working knowledge of the concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, and other basic conventions of the English writing system. These foundational skills do not represent an endpoint--they are necessary and important components of an effective, comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers who comprehend texts across a range of types and disciplines (CCSS, 2010).This document serves (a) literacy leaders at the regional level who support state, district, and school administrators and (b) teachers who seek to know and understand the sub-skills, or prerequisites, students need to achieve each of the Foundational Skills (K-5) in the Common Core State Reading Standards. The foundational skills define end-of-year expectations. As with the other standards, the authors have been written this way intentionally to allow teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how to meet these expectations. The foundational skills describe the concepts children must acquire to become proficient in decoding text. Researchers have determined a general progression of how children develop these skills (Vandervelden & Siegel, 1995; Adams, 1996; Ehri, 1998; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000). The authors have based this document on an analysis that determined the "sub-skills" students need to achieve each foundational skill. In this document, they define a "sub-skill" as a concept or behavior in which a student needs to be proficient to master the foundational skill. They also include "instructional examples" aligned to the "sub-skills". The "instructional examples" give teachers samples of activity types that facilitate acquisition of the "sub-skills", which can lead to attainment of the Common Core State Standards. This document contains five sections. Each section targets one grade level and includes the following four areas of reading: Print Concepts, Phonological Awareness, Phonics and Word Recognition, and Fluency. Each section centers on one grade level, but the authors have included up to three grade levels on each chart so that educators have access to the "sub-skills" to inform instruction for students who are either struggling and need extra support or intervention, or for students performing above grade level expectations and require enrichment. This also allows a teacher to see which skills should have been mastered in the previous year and what students are preparing for in the upcoming years.