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tensive. They require analytic, evaluative, and reflective access to local and long-term memory. Yet active attention is limited. To the extent that readers must struggle with recognizing the words of a text, they lose track of meaning (Daneman and Tardiff, 1987; Perfetti, 1985).

Word Recognition, Reading Fluency, and Spelling

By the end of third grade, students should possess the skills, habits, and learning strategies needed for fourth grade success. This means not only that students should be reading on grade level but also that they should be demonstrably prepared to discuss, learn about, and write about the ideas and information encountered in their texts. By the end of second grade, students should have been introduced, with guidance, to representative types of text-based learning and performance to come and should be reading at least simple chapter books and other texts of their choice with comfort and understanding. At the beginning of second grade, however, the reading of many children is too laborious and unsure to admit independent reading or understanding of any but the simplest of texts.

At least in early acquisition, reading ability is a bit like foreign language ability: use it or lose it, and the more tenuous the knowledge, the greater the loss. Thus, the well-documented and substantial losses in reading ability that are associated with summer vacation are especially marked for younger and poorer readers (Hayes and Grether, 1983; Alexander and Entwisle, 1996). On the first day of school, second-grade teachers thus typically find themselves faced with two sets of students. A few are reading independently at relatively advanced levels; typically these are students who read well enough at the end of first grade to read on their own during the summer. Many other students seem not to know how to read at all. Most of the latter have simply forgotten what they learned in the first grade, but some failed to learn to read adequately in the first place. As quickly as possible, the second-grade teacher's job is to figure out which group is which and to ensure that all students gain or regain the first-grade accomplishments and move on.