Third grade is the earliest grade tested by the state. The reading program itself is intended to benefit students from transitional kindergarten — age 4 — through third grade.

1. Teaching phonics is great and absolutely necessary, but beware of non-phonetic words such as those spelled with “ough” (tough, bough, ought, through, though).

Phonics, Whole-word And Whole-language Processes Add Up To Determine Reading Speed, Study Shows. ScienceDaily . Retrieved May 1, 2025 from www.sciencedaily.com / releases / 2007 / 08 ...

As phonics took hold in U.S. schools in the 1970s, fourth–graders began to do better on standardized reading tests. In the 1980s, California replaced its phonics curriculum with a whole language ...

New research suggests that relying on phonics, a method of learning where an individual sounds out words, helps students to learn reading faster when compared with the whole-language technique ...