When Should Reading Instruction Begin?

Blast from the Past: This entry first dropped on October 26, 2019, and was reissued on January 24, 2026. The only change is an update to the NAEYC statement (it was in draft form when originally cited).

Teacher question:

What does research say about early literacy and when to begin? I am aware that kids may reach the stage of development where they're ready for reading at different times. What does the research say about the "window" for when a kid can learn to read? What are the consequences if they haven't started reading past that time?

Shanahan response:

Oh, fun. The kind of question that generates strong scholarly (sounding) opinion, with no real data to go on.

The advocates on both sides will bloviate about windows of opportunity, developmentally appropriate practice, potential harms of early or later starts, and how kids in Finland are doing.

Despite the impressive citations that show up in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, or in various blogs, the truth is that there is no definitive research on this issue.

The meager handful of supposedly direct comparisons between starting earlier versus later are so ham-handed that I’m surprised they were even published.

One example is a longitudinal study that followed kids for six years… after either a dose of academically- or play-focused preschool. The research claimed that the kids taught early ended up with lower later achievement (Marcon, 2002).

That sounds horrible, until you look closely at the analysis and it becomes evident that the comparisons were questionable and the statistics specious (Lonigan, 2003). More of the play-group kids were retained along the way, so the final comparison—the one that finally found the difference the researcher was seeking—wasn’t between the same samples as at the beginning. The researcher’s response to this criticism suggests that the samples weren’t equivalent at the start either, further highlighting that this study couldn’t possibly reveal whether early teaching was helpful, hurtful, or not an issue at all.

I can provide examples going in the other direction, too. Since graduate school I have been told that young children are especially able learners and that the earlier we start teaching the better the odds that we’ll catch kids during that “portal of receptivity” (Gross, 2016).

The evidence behind that argument seems mainly based on the fact that from about 18 months to 5-years-of-age children learn an amazing amount of vocabulary; and that so-called vocabulary spurt is a real one. However, the idea that everything or even everything involving language is learned easily during those years is where the leap of faith comes in.

Reading development certainly does depend upon vocabulary, but there is much more to learning reading, and there is no convincing evidence that four-year-olds will learn to read more quickly or easily than would be the case a year or three later. Just because youngsters learn spoken words fast, doesn’t mean that they are able to perceive the sounds within words (phonological awareness), or that they'll be able to master the names and sounds of the letters (the beginnings of decoding) especially easily.

When I argue for teaching reading to young children, my claim is not that we need to take advantage of a particularly beneficial time when kids are most attuned to learning. (Though when I put forth such advice, I usually hear from those who, based on Finland’s educational attainment, claim that starting at 7-years-old is the magic ingredient to literacy success… an argument that neglects a few other differences between Finland and the English-speaking world, including homogeneity of population, relatively high economic advantage, formidable linguistic differences, and the fact that, according to the Finnish government, most of their children learn to read prior to entering school at age 7).

English reading can be challenging so I encourage as early a start as possible (and, no, research reveals no harm in this).

Starting early increases the amount of time available for kids to learn. Often kids enter kindergarten or first grade with the expectation that they are to learn to read that year. Spreading this expectation across 3-4 years can reduce pressure and anxiety.

This also means that it is possible to successfully teach older students to read. We often hear the statistics that show that early reading problems persist. But these problems don’t persist because we missed some magical window of learning opportunity, but because we are not doing the things that will allow older students to succeed.

My advice, if you are a parent or caregiver, start introducing your children to literacy once they are born—reading to them, talking to them, singing to them, showing them how to write their names, writing down their stories, teaching the alphabet and letter sounds, playing with language sounds (e.g., “K-K-K-Katie”), and so on.

Of course, young children have brief attention spans. But that’s one of the benefits of starting so early—you can take advantage of 20 seconds here, 3 minutes there, over a long period which can make a big learning difference.

If you are a preschool, kindergarten, or first-grade teacher, begin teaching reading once you meet the children…

Give kids as long a timeline as possible and don’t worry about an optimum time to teach reading. There isn’t one.

The reason for starting early isn’t to capture some magic window of neuronal plasticity, but to make the window as big as possible. If teaching early identifies a youngster who struggles to learn reading, then we will have more years to address this youngster’s needs. The later we wait, the smaller that window of opportunity. We want kids to have the maximum opportunity to learn.

We hear a lot about “developmental appropriateness” these days, and this concept is used to dismiss the early teaching of reading—"don't teach reading until it is developmentally appropriate."

If that is what you are hearing I suggest reading the National Association of Educators of Young Children’s policy on this matter:

“From infancy through age 8, proactively building children’s conceptual and factual knowledge, including academic vocabulary, is essential because knowledge is the primary driver of comprehension. The more children (and adults) know, the better their listening comprehension and, later, reading comprehension. Therefore, by building knowledge of the world in early childhood, educators are laying the foundation that is critical for all future learning (How People Learn I and II). The idea that young children are not ready for academic subject matter is a misunderstanding of DAP; particularly in grades 1-3, almost all subject matter can be taught in ways that are meaningful and engaging for each child (citations)” (NAEYC, 2019).

Developmental appropriateness has more to do with how we might teach something successfully than with what we teach. Keeping lessons brief and lively makes great sense with young children (and it doesn’t hurt the older ones either). Teaching phonemic awareness with songs and chants is a great idea, and it can be fun to play games built around letters and sounds. Introducing reading and writing through play areas set up like post offices, restaurants, libraries, and the like are all developmentally appropriate for the youngest of our preschoolers.

Start teaching reading from the time you have kids available to teach and pay attention to how they respond to this instruction—both in terms of how well they are learning what you are teaching, and how happy and invested they seem to be. If you haven't started yet, don't feel guilty, just get going.

References

Gross, G. (2016). Windows of opportunity, part 1. Huffpost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/windows-of-opportunity-part-1_b_57c937cee4b06c750dd984b1

Lonigan, C. J. (2003). Comment on Marcon. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 5(1). https://ecrp.illinois.edu/v5n1/lonigan.html

Marcon, R. A. (2002). Moving up the grades: Relationship between preschool model and later school success. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 4(1). https://ecrp.illinois.edu/v4n1/marcon.html

National Association of Educators of Young Children. (2019). Developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) position statement. Washington, DC: NAEYC. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/dap/contents

Past comments

Shanahan On Literacy Podcast

Comments

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Elizabeth {Betty} Clemens Jan 24, 2026 06:57 PM

I learned to read from Grimm's Fairy Tales before Grandma took me to school at age three. There I learned to break words phonetically in Spelling class. As an avid reader in a household of readers I became a certified reading specialist who started her own school specifically for children reading below grade level. I was able to bring them beyond grade level by placing them in a goal-setting program based on entering testing. However the system stopped making the student aware of his scores on national standardized testing, keeping records based on schools, rather than students. It was a ploy to focus schools in comparison with other schools in their district. Statewide comparisons became useless as the attention moved from student to school. Clever manipulation to disguise student achievement at grade levels to protect teacher responsibility for failures. I thought we had moved past those teacher union methods and had, finally, recognized teachers as professionals.

Kathleen Mikulka Jan 24, 2026 07:14 PM

Timothy, As usual your thoughts are full of common sense: children learn to become fluent readers over a range of years. However, starting teaching reading "too early" isn't the problem. The problem is that this idea has become so entrenched that we are telling parents that their child "failed" kindergarten (based on a computerized reading test). Rather than respecting the "window" that students fall into (K-2), we don't seem able to give the extra help some children need without making it sound as if there is something seriously wrong with the child--and the teachers/school. So, once again, standardized testing is being used to stigmatize children and punish schools rather than using the date to help the schools. You know what they do with "failing schools" in Finland: show up with specialists to diagnose and fix the problem--no shaming involved.

Dr. Bill Conrad Jan 24, 2026 08:06 PM

Hello Time,

While encouraging early reading opportunities will support early literacy in young children, you are ignoring the very significant BLUEY effect.

The children are absolutely in love with Bluey and will spend an inordinate amount of time watching this adorable cartoon character for hours on TV . The children can’t get enough of Bluey!

This will leave adults who want to promote early literacy in young children singing the Blues! No?

Lauren Jan 25, 2026 03:40 PM

Thank you for this common sense post. The only problem that I see with very early instruction in reading is if it is the systematic phonics drill and kill type. We live in anxious times, and parents can feel pressured to give their children a head start. Some parents may be drilling phonics and practicing GATE type puzzles online to prepare their children to get ahead. Some teachers may over-do the phonics side of literacy/reading instruction because they feel pressured to have their students perform well on online nonsense word assessments, or because they think they are following the SOR. Early childhood instruction should include all aspects of literacy presented in engaging, interesting, and lively ways as you mentioned). I have seen that some children are more developmentally ready for formal reading instruction than others. Usually, if you keep up reading instruction with them, the skills will come together by fourth grade. About twenty percent of students have a harder time learning to read. They process written language to spoken language more slowly. It makes a lot of sense for these children to get the earliest start developing language/reading. The early instruction just needs to be developmentally appropriate, enriching, and engaging.

Gaynor Chapman Feb 08, 2026 03:55 AM

Last century I was involved in the teaching privately , of hundreds of three and four year olds in begining early reading instruction. . Parents brought younger siblings because an older child had failed to read and the angst involved in that was very motivating for a parent to try and prevent a repeat with the younger child,
Although , the lesson was a short with the parent always present as well as individual tuition of the child . much of the lesson time was also giving advice on activities helpful for preparation in beginning reading These included learning to concentrate and completing a task like a jigsaw,or matching shapes , holding a pencil/chalk/crayon / writing letters in a sand-box and having the child learning to be compiiant as well as listening to sounds and phonological awareness like hearing rhyming and alliteration in language .
Marie Clay was our antagonist in those days and she was very focused on developmental psychology and being developmentally ready . We pretty much ignored all that stuff as we did all the rest of her now soundly disproved ideas. Now , I think there is a bit of an obsession with sounds and certainly we read with our ears but we also need practise in visual discrimination.
Anyway most of the children had grade -reading age of 6-7 years by the age of five years . We used your American Ginn 100 work books and old Curriculum and Heilman Phonics workbooks which are very detailed in teaching both phonics and items like the left to right progression as well as sentence comprehension etc. What was good about these workbooks was that anyone including parents or even older children can work through these books with a child .even if only three year olds at home for about quarter of an hour every day.
Progressive academics are not very fond of my reference to useful material from the 'olden days ' but from my perspective we need to recover from the 50 years of dark ages of Whole Language riddled with completely wrong ideas . N Z in 1970 , before Whole Language ,had the highest international scores in .reading comprehension and part of that success was achieved by using the Americam materials , mentioned above ,as class sets
What surprises me is that much of that which was done in the past is now supported by recent research. I'm a traditionist so of course I would say that !