--- title: Learning to Read Does Not End in Fourth Grade description: Do you remember when reading stopped requiring so much effort, and became almost second nature? canonical: https://time.com/3015497/learn-to-read-past-fourth-grade/ author: Abby Abrams article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-23T13:00:48.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:37.118Z article:section: Health og:title: Learning to Read Does Not End in Fourth Grade og:description: Word-processing skills develop even past fifth grade og:url: https://time.com/3015497/learn-to-read-past-fourth-grade/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfb7f7bf0b0d1c3ad/69869ca0f983e7390b04eea9/girl-learning-to-read.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3661 og:image:height: 2059 og:image:alt: Girl learning to read og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Learning to Read Does Not End in Fourth Grade twitter:description: Word-processing skills develop even past fifth grade twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfb7f7bf0b0d1c3ad/69869ca0f983e7390b04eea9/girl-learning-to-read.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Learning to Read Does Not End in Fourth Grade > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=cb364358-ff13-46fe-aa69-53e94fae9ad5&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Educator You Wish Your Kids Had: Geoffrey Canada [Watch (HLS stream): The Educator You Wish Your Kids Had: Geoffrey Canada](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Q0okdOiE.m3u8) (3:18)  _Published 2013-11-20. Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone made the TIME 100 list in 2011. Since then he's begun a bold experiment to transform one of Harlem's most distressed neighborhoods._ by [Abby Abrams](https://time.com/author/abby-abrams/) ## Abby Abrams Jul 23, 2014 1:00 PM UTC  School girl reading a book at a desk in a classroom School girl reading a book at a desk in a classroom Cultura RM/Gary John Norman—Getty Images/Collection Mix: Subjects RM by [Abby Abrams](https://time.com/author/abby-abrams/) ## Abby Abrams Jul 23, 2014 1:00 PM UTC Probably not, but researchers have long believed that it probably happened some time during fourth grade. That’s when, they thought, word-processing tended to become more automatic and less deliberate, and you started to read to learn, as opposed to learning to read. But a new study published in the journal _Developmental Science_ questions that assumption, showing that children are still learning to read past fourth and even fifth grade. The shift to automatic word-processing, in which the brain recognizes whether a group of symbols constitutes a word within milliseconds, allowing fluid reading that helps the reader focus on the content of the text rather than on the words, may occur later than previously thought. To test when this process develops, researchers fitted 96 college, third, fourth and fifth grade students with electrode caps to scan their brains as they were shown on a screen real words, fake words, strings of letters and strings of random symbols. The third-, fourth- and fifth-graders processed real words, fake words, and letter strings similarly to the college students, showing that some automatic word-processing begins as early as third grade. But only the college students processed the meaningless symbols differently from actual words—which suggests that brain activity in the three groups of young children remained the same whether they were processing real words or not. While they showed some signs of automatic word processing, or no longer exerting effort to read, for the most part the younger children still treated familiar and unfamiliar words in the same way. However, when the researchers switched to a written test, which presumably gave the participants the more time to think about the distinctions, all groups scored above 95 percent, showing that with some effort, or when their conscious brains were involved, the children also realized the difference between real and fake words. That suggests that for the young children, the processing wasn’t automatic just yet. Study author Donna Coch, associate professor of education at Dartmouth, says that it’s not that fourth graders can’t read well, but rather they aren’t quite as efficient as adults at reading. “You have a limited amount of resources, and if you’re using them on words that could not be words in your language, that’s taking up resources that could be used in word processing,” says Coch. “If you don’t have to put in effort to sound out words, you can pay more attention to understanding.” So if fourth-graders aren’t quite reading to learn, then when does the shift toward more complete automatic word-processing occur? According to Coch, that probably happens some time between fifth grade and college—a period she says that hasn’t been studied. For now, the results strongly suggest that reading skills need to continue to be nurtured during that period. “This certainly does suggest that teachers beyond fourth grade are still teachers of reading,” says Coch. ## Transcript I was here one day, and I saw a scene, that was out of Dante's Inferno. I saw young people running around using language, that would shock a sailor, and they were eight, nine years old. And, there was adults staffed there. Why do they let these little kids, talk and act like this? And, I realized, it was because they're in the housing project. And, in their minds, that's how people act here. Well, that's outrageous. So, I said to my team. We're gonna, we can't allow this. When President Clinton was in office, I spent some time talking to Secretary Cisneros who was in charge of HUD. And, he just didn't know what to do with the housing projects. And, a decision was made, there's nothing you can do. These places are so terrible, you've got to essentially tear em down and start over from scratch. And, I thought what you do is, you put in a set of support for that community. Whose mission is, to not only change the educational outcomes for all the young people. But actually change the culture, of what it means to live inside of a, basically, a closed community. [ MUSIC ] How I did the Harlem Children's Home was to end generational poverty. My people, grandparents were poor, the parents are poor, the children are gonna be poor, we wanted to break that cycle. To really do this, we have to concentrate on a place. We've just got a couple of classes in, but from ten years from now? Just about, every kid in this housing complex will be in this school. They'll all be my kids, and I will know them all by name, and they will be model citizens. [ INAUDIBLE ] That's just the way this thing goes. [ INAUDIBLE ] And they'll be model citizens in the building, and they'll be model citizens in their community. And the main focus of the Education Secretary's visit was getting parents and teachers to make education a priority. Our promise neighborhoods initiative. Has been based upon Geoffrey Canada's success in the Harlem Children's Home. We've invested over a hundred million dollars across the country, into fifty different communities. [ MUSIC ] I'm in tough economic times, we're asking Congress for about $ 300 million, to put behind this and to invest more. There's tremendous interest around the country, a thousand partnerships have signed up. In a community, like Harlem, when college was a vague abstraction. Right, it's almost every college. Yeah, I think I know somebody, who is going to college, I think they lived over on 128th street. When you start getting numbers like 900 kids, my kids say, college, of course, I'm going to college. He's in college, look at that guy! He can go to college, I can go to college! Totally changes the concept. 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