Now that it's the end of the year and you have already taught all of the First Grade sight words, you will love these animal reading passages to use for guided reading, literacy centers, homework, or whole class instruction.
How I used these in my First Grade Classroom:
Give your students a choice. Giving students a choice between two animals to read about lets them decide which passage they will genuinely want to read about, thus peaking an interest.
Now that you have them hooked...Do a quick Sight word review with the words at the bottom. and have them highlight the words first. Having them do a word hunt will give them confidence in knowing at least three words in the passage. This helps them get a head start.
Vocabulary Review: go through the passage and review the bold words. Some do not have bold words but you can always make the best decision as the teacher of which words you think might be tricky or words that need clarification.
3 Reads: I usually have the kids read the passage three times. The first time I read aloud with them listening and pointing with their reading fingers as they listen. They should be following along with me. Second time they read it to me and I help them with the tricky words. As we read, we pause and highlight the sight words. The Third time they read I have the students either read to a partner, or they can whisper read, do it in a silly voice., etc. You can even do boys vs. girls in the class or teacher vs. students.
Reading Comprehension : after reading the passage I have the students answer the three questions so I could check for understanding. Depending on the level of each student I would allow them to do it on their own or if they needed more scaffolding I would prompt questions and we would highlight or annotate together.
Main Idea / Detail Page: this part is fun for the kids because you can give them the choice to draw a picture in the boxes or they can write a sentence. Sometimes I would not have time to do both so I would break this reading activity up into two mini lessons or two days.
Extension: If you have parents looking for extra reading practice for this summer you can always print these out and create a take home packet for the students and parents to work on over the summer as well.
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