OOliteracy Milestones Series: Grade One 6-7 Years Old

Grade one is a year of exciting growth—when letters come together to form words, words build into stories, and stories become a way for children to start to share information in a new way. It’s a time when confidence grows, not just in reading and writing, but in understanding language and expressing ideas.

Whether your child is just starting to sound out words or eagerly tackling early readers, every small step is a big leap in their literacy journey. This page outlines some key reading, writing, numeracy, speaking, and listening milestones for first graders—helping you recognize growth, celebrate achievements, and gently support areas that are still developing.

Let’s explore what literacy looks like in first grade and how we can nurture a lifelong love of language!

Grade One Literacy Milestones: Ages 6-7 Years Old

This time is one of growing curiosity, confidence, and connection as children discover the power of words all around them. When you understand what literacy looks like in grade one, it becomes easier to spot moments of progress and find meaningful ways to support their journey.

Literacy Milestones	6-7 Years
Can sound out (decode) unfamiliar words using phonics skills. Uses strategies to figure out unknown words (like sounding them out and using context clues).	✔
Recognizes many common high-frequency words without needing to sound them out (e.g., from, again, when, could).	✔
Reads simple books aloud, like early readers, with growing speed, accuracy, and expression.	✔
Understand different types of texts — stories vs. informational texts – fact vs. fiction.	✔
Develops more control and consistency in printing letters.	✔
Begins writing short stories with a clear beginning, middle, and end.	✔
Spells many short, common words correctly and attempts to spell more difficult words phonetically (sounding them out).	✔
Asks and answers who, what, where, when, and how questions about a story.	✔
Makes predictions about what will happen next in stories, retells stories with a logical sequence, and includes key details in story summaries.	✔
Starts to writes complete sentences with capital letters and punctuation.	✔
Able to follow multi-step directions.	✔
Beginning signs of going back and rereading words or sentences that do not make sense to them — starting to self-monitor their comprehension.	✔
Talks about books and stories they’ve read — sharing opinions or explaining characters’ actions.	✔
Begins noticing synonyms and antonyms (e.g., “happy” vs. “excited”).	✔
Begins to connect texts with personal experience, other books they’ve read.	✔
Counts forward and backward up to 100 and can tell if one number is bigger, smaller, or equal to another.	✔
Adds and subtracts numbers up to 20.	✔
Uses a wider range of words and starts distinguishing between formal and informal language (with peers, at home vs. at school).	✔
Can blend or break apart the individual sounds (phonemes) of most one-syllable words, like lip and hat.	✔
Finds and makes simple patterns.	✔
Estimates and measures real quantities using non-standard units (blocks or other manipulatives)	✔
Begins to sound out more complex words, including words with silent “e” at the end.	✔
Able to recognize, read, and write many compound words, plural forms, and some contractions.	✔
Can answer simple written comprehension questions.	✔
Locates the title, author name, illustrator name and table of contents.	✔
Identifies opposites (e.g., hot/cold, big/small) and uses them to describe or contrast things and is able to sort and classify items by one or more attributes (e.g., color, size, shape, use).	✔
Listens to others for short periods of time without interrupting and distinguishes between asking and telling.	✔

Summary of key literacy milestones for children aged 6-7 years old. Graphics of little girl writing, young boy reading, and young girl speaking into a megaphone.

Activities To Build Children’s Literacy Skills Who are in Grade One – Ages 6-7

Whether you’re chatting at breakfast, walking to school, or getting creative at the kitchen table, there are countless ways to help your child grow in their speaking, listening, reading, writing, and numeracy skills. Here’s a big list of practical, playful ideas to explore together.

Ask open-ended questions like “What was the funniest thing today?” or “If you could build anything, what would it be?”

Write a sentence, cut out the words, and scramble them. Have your child put them back in order.

Invite your child to help write grocery lists, birthday cards, thank-you notes, or even with creating a picture book together of family events or a topic of interest.

Use language like more, fewer, same, and less, along with simple adding and subtracting examples, when comparing everyday items.

Clap or tap a pattern and have your child repeat it. Then switch roles. You might incorporate some chants and rhymes.

Ensure your little one is practicing proper letter formation in short bursts. They can also be writing words by tracing and copying over dotted lines.

Incorporating other fun pencil work activities alongside letter formation helps keep motivation strong, such as mazes, find the differences, and matching activities.

Do short structured learning sessions to practice both oral and print phoneme isolation, deletion, and blending tasks with simple 3 letter consonant – vowel – consonant (CVC) words, like hug, pan, and hop.

After reading a short book, ask your child to retell the beginning, middle, and end. Use pictures as clues if needed—this supports comprehension and sequencing.

You can also incorporate other types of sequencing activities into their learning activities.

Encourage creative story telling. Give the first sentence: “One windy day, a hat blew off…” and let your child finish the story.

Encourage your learner to use descriptive language, such as size, texture, speed, amount, shape, and temperature.

Create intentional moments for your child to practice sharing their opinions and why their opinion is what it is, as well as explaining their knowledge.

You might ask, who is your favourite character in the story and ask why they picked this character. You can also ask how to do something they can do well, such as how to build a tower or brush their teeth.

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