IES
What Works
Practice Guide
This practice guide provides four recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills to students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Each recommendation includes implementation steps and solutions for common obstacles. The recommendations also summarize and rate supporting evidence. This guide is geared towards teachers, administrators, and other educators who want to improve their students’ foundational reading skills, and is a companion to the practice guide, Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade.
Teach students academic language skills, including the use of inferential and narrative language, and vocabulary knowledge.
Develop awareness of the segments of sounds in speech and how they link to letters.
Teach students to decode words, analyze word parts, and write and recognize words.
Ensure that each student reads connected text every day to support reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.
