Language+Development-6+year+olds

 At age 6, most first-graders can:
 * Read and retell familiar stories
 * Use a variety of ways to help with reading a story such as re-reading, predicting what will happen, asking questions, or using visual cues or pictures
 * Decide on their own to use reading and writing for different purposes
 * Read some things aloud with ease
 * Identify new words by using letter-sound matches, parts of words, and their understanding of the rest of a story or printed item
 * Identify an increasing number of words by sight
 * Sound out and represent major sounds in a word when trying to spell
 * Write about topics that mean a lot to them
 * Try to use some punctuation and capitalization