To develop the high-level reading comprehension skills required to be College and Career Ready by the end of third grade, students need to develop both word reading and listening comprehension skills. The Queen City Readers™ (QCR) initiative supports one of these key areas: word reading.
QCR, which was developed by Read Charlotte in 2023, targets foundational word reading skills covered in the kindergarten and first grade years. The content includes:
- Hearing sounds within words (phonemic awareness)
- Sounding out words (decoding)
- Spelling words (encoding)
- High-frequency word practice
These expectations are aligned with the North Carolina English Language Arts standards for kindergarten and first grade. QCR is grounded in an evidence-based, systematic approach to phonics instruction called synthetic phonics. QCR was intentionally designed to be delivered by adults with little to no training and no formal background in literacy or education. The materials are turnkey, meant to be used within a wide variety of settings with existing infrastructure, such as schools, community-based organizations, and Houses of Faith. Volunteer tutors need less than 30 minutes of asynchronous training to be prepared to deliver a lesson.
Our community’s use of QCR has continued to expand since it was first piloted in spring 2023. Seven community-based organizations are using QCR in the 2024-25 school year, along with Pineville Elementary School, which is using it for the third consecutive academic year.
