In which grade range do students typically start using reading skills across subject areas?

Students typically start using reading skills across subject areas in the 3rd to 5th grade range. This period marks a significant transition in education where students shift from learning to read to reading to learn. By the end of 2nd grade, students often develop foundational decoding and comprehension skills, primarily focusing on reading as an isolated skill.

As they enter the 3rd to 5th grades, the curriculum emphasizes integrating reading with other subjects such as science and social studies. In this stage, students are expected to apply their reading abilities to understand and analyze content that requires them to extract information from texts, engage with complex vocabulary, and make inferences based on their reading.

While 4th to 8th grade is also a time of further development in these skills, the foundational integration of reading across various subjects begins to solidify earlier, solidly placing this transition during the 3rd to 5th grades. This marks a crucial point in developing literacy that supports learning across the curriculum.