About the Program
Grades K-2
Grades 3-6
New Standards Reporting
What Is Benchmark Literacy?
Benchmark Literacy is a comprehensive, research-proven program that empowers teachers with tools for vertically aligned K-6 reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language instruction.
- Builds foundational skills such as phonics, word study, and fluency
- Scaffolds ALL students to access complex informational and literary texts
- Guides students to use text evidence in close reading
- Provides opportunities for students to develop collaborative conversations
- Develops writers by teaching writing process and writing to sources
Comprehension-Focused Instruction
Benchmark Literacy supports the reading of complex informational and literary texts by providing vertically aligned comprehension instruction, focused around metacognitive and text-dependent comprehension strategies.
Readers may apply metacognitive strategies to ANY text they read, by visualizing, making connections, or asking themselves questions to increase their understanding; however, the content and organization of certain texts require readers to use specific
Benchmark Literacy builds these strategies so that students can successfully navigate narrative, informational, and opinion/argument texts to analyze the content, learn new information, and develop a rich vocabulary.
Impressive Gains in Reading Achievement
Year after year, research has shown that classrooms using Benchmark Literacy are making greater gains in reading achievement than those that are not. Main Street Academix, an independent, third-party educational research company, says:
Impressive, rare, and admirable in the world of educational interventions. More impressive than the overall score improvements were that these gains in reading achievement generalized to students typically considered at educational risk.2013 Report 2013 Research 2016 Report
Build strategies and apply them through close reading of text.
Unit Metacognitive Strategy | Unit Comprehension Strategy | K | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Visualize | Analyze Character | |||||||
Summarize & Synthesize | Analyze Story Elements | |||||||
Determine Text Importance | Compare & Contrast | |||||||
Make Inferences | Draw Conclusions | |||||||
Make Connections | Identify Cause & Effect | |||||||
Ask Questions | Identify Main Idea & Supporting Details | |||||||
Determine Text Importance | Identify Sequence of Events | |||||||
Make Connections or Visualize | Make Inferences | |||||||
Make Inferences | Make Predictions | |||||||
Fix-Up Monitoring | Summarize Information | |||||||
Summarize & Synthesize | Evaluate Author's Purpose | |||||||
Make Connections | Distinguish & Evaluate Fact & Opinion | |||||||
Ask Questions | Make Judgments |
Digital Resources Available on Benchmark Universe

Benchmark Universe provides access to your content, planning, and management tools for all of Benchmark Education's core and supplemental digital solutions. Students, teachers, and administrators can access the platform anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
Go to Benchmark UniverseProfessional Development

Benchmark Education Company provides research-proven professional development services to ensure that educators have the confidence they need to effectively implement Benchmark Literacy.
Our services include:
- On-site product in service training
- Customized job-embedded training and coaching
- Train-the-Trainer sessions
- Customized on-site training sessions
- Web-based training sessions
Benchmark Literacy supports best-practices balanced literacy instruction with formal and observational assessment tools, professional development resources, and instructional tools in the toolkits for teachers, coaches, and administrators.