Reading benchmarks · by grade
Kindergarten reading expectations by the end of the year
By the end of kindergarten, the skill that matters most is blending: hearing the separate sounds in a short word like cat and pushing them together. Kindergarten is usually the year letter sounds get secure, short-vowel words get sounded out and the first common words like the and said become familiar. There is no reading-speed norm for kindergarten.
End-of-kindergarten benchmarks
Kindergarten has no published fluency norm, so these are phonics and sight-word markers. Each line says where it comes from.
- Phonics
Letter sounds, then short-vowel (CVC) words
The usual teaching order starts with letter sounds (the sound, not the name), then three-letter short-vowel words like sat, pin and hot, then sh, ch and th.
- Sight words
Dolch pre-primer (40 words) and primer (52 words)
The pre-primer list is traditionally taught from preschool to kindergarten, the primer list in kindergarten.
- An outside yardstick
England's Phonics Screening Check: 32 out of 40
Children the same age as US kindergartners (age 5–6, Year 1 in England) read 40 words aloud to a teacher: 20 real and 20 made up. The expected standard is 32 out of 40. It's an English standard, not a US one, but it shows what decoding at this age can look like.
- Reading speed
No kindergarten norm
Hasbrouck & Tindal's 2017 fluency norms start in the middle of 1st grade. Accuracy matters more than speed this year.
Find where your kindergartner's phonics breaks down
Your child reads short lists of letters and real and made-up words. You tap right or wrong, and you see the first pattern to practise.
Sit side by side, then start
Your child reads; you tap Right or Not yet. Don't help during the check. It goes list by list — letter sounds, short-vowel words (cvc), digraphs (sh, ch, th, ck), consonant blends (st, fl, cr, -nd…), silent e (a_e, i_e, o_e, u_e), vowel teams (ai, ay, ee, oa, igh), r-controlled vowels (ar, or, er, ir, ur), two-syllable words — and stops by itself when a list is clearly too hard.
About 5 minutes · No email needed to see the result
If they're below that line
If letter sounds aren't secure, that's the first job: three or four sounds at a time, every day, until they come instantly.
If sounds are in place but blending isn't, practise short-vowel words, starting with short a. For sight words, work through the primer list a few words a day.
This is not a diagnosis
This is not a diagnosis or an assessment, and a reassuring result doesn't rule anything out. Children learn to read on different timelines. If you're worried about your child's reading, talk to your child's teacher. The figures on this page describe groups of children, not a line your child has to cross by a certain date.
Frequently asked questions
How many sight words should a kindergartner know?
There's no official number. The Dolch primer list is usually taught in kindergarten and has 52 words; the pre-primer list before it has 40. Most of the words can be sounded out, so phonics practice helps with both.
Should my kindergartner be reading books by the end of the year?
Short decodable books, often with help: books written with the sound patterns they've been taught. Reading longer books alone usually comes in 1st and 2nd grade.
My kindergartner knows letter names but not the sounds. Is that normal?
It's common, and it's the first thing to work on, because reading uses the sounds. Practise a few letter sounds at a time in mixed-up order and add one when they feel easy.
Free: the 10-minute daily phonics routine
Four short steps you can do with your child every day: sounds, blending, reading and a quick chat about the story. One printable page.
We'll email you the 10-minute daily phonics routine, a few short reading tips over the next month, then at most one monthly roundup of new guides. Unsubscribe anytime.
Where the numbers come from
- Phonics order: the teaching order our informal phonics skill check follows (letter sounds, short-vowel words, digraphs, blends and on). We designed it; it is not a validated assessment.
- Dolch, E. W. (1936). A basic sight vocabulary. The Elementary School Journal.
- Dolch, E. W. (1948). Problems in Reading. Champaign, IL: Garrard Press.
- England's Phonics Screening Check: as summarised in our school year and grade equivalents chart.
- Hasbrouck, J. & Tindal, G. (2017). An Update to Compiled ORF Norms (Technical Report No. 1702). Behavioral Research and Teaching, University of Oregon. Table 4: Compiled ORF Norms 2017 (report p. 10).