How to Use Decodable Reading Passages in First Grade

Why You Should Use Decodable Reading Passages in First Grade

We know that students require direct instruction in fundamental reading components like phonics, phonological awareness, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. Decodable reading passages effectively cover most of those components and are great to include in your First Grade reading instruction! Using Decodable Reading Passages in First Grade will improve your students’ reading skills as they work on their phonics, comprehension, and fluency,.

Read about how I use Decodable Reading Passages in my First Grade classroom. Get a free set to try in your own classroom!

Decodable Passages:

Offer structured phonics guidance
Engage students with enjoyment and are easy for teachers to use
Deliver high-quality text at a meticulously controlled level
Applicable across a variety of learning environments

How to Use Decodable Reading Passages in First Grade

My Decodable Passages and Activity Packs come with three different activities to encourage familiarity and confidence in early readers. The same passage will be used in a fluency passage, with comprehension questions, and in a cloze reading activity so that the student becomes successful after multiple exposures to the text.

Let’s dive in to see how you can use each of these activities in your first grade classroom.

Fluency Passages

Using Decodable Reading Passages in First Grade is a great way to focus on phonics instruction, work on fluency, and improve reading comprehension!

Fluency passages are great because they repeatedly expose students to the same text. As we know, that’s how we build confidence in our readers and boost their fluency skills!

After introducing the phonics pattern you want to focus on, give students the fluency sheet that aligns with your teaching skill. Students should read through the fluency passage three times. By doing this, they become familiar with words that include the phonics pattern and the overall story. Each time they read, they should color a star.

On this page, I like to provide students with highlighters so they can highlight all the words that include the phonics pattern you’re focusing on. Questions are provided at the bottom of this page to use as a discussion after reading. These are especially great if you complete this in a small group setting. I also love sending these home as homework so parents can have a quick discussion about the text with their child!

Comprehension Questions

While fluency passages are great for exposing students to controlled text, comprehension passages make students think about the text. Oftentimes, we focus on getting the students to read the words. We often forget that understanding what they read is equally important! That’s where these passages come into play.

The comprehension passages also include the three stars to be colored after each read. Following the reading, students will answer three simple questions to check their understanding of the story.

A handwriting line is provided for students to answer so that they’re also practicing penmanship. On this page, my students use crayons or colored pencils to circle all the words that include the phonics pattern we focus on.

Cloze Reading Activities

Now that they’ve practiced reading and understanding the text, they can try to make sense of it with a Cloze reading activity. Cloze readings help students learn how to make sense of the text. Check out this blog post to see how cloze reading activities can help improve students comprehension.

In the cloze reading activity, students will see the same story they are already familiar with. They will fill in the blanks using the word bank.

Decodable Reading Passages in First Grade

Cloze reading activities are a great way to improve student comprehension as they make sense of a familiar text. You can get this and more in my Controlled Text bundle!

These worksheets help implement decodable reading passages in your First Grade reading instruction.

Many teachers have seen excellent results using these activities to help children learn to decode texts and improve their reading fluency and comprehension.

I implement a 3-step process in my classroom using these decodable reading passages to enhance learning. As a teacher, I love the predictable pattern, and my students come to expect each step in the process as we practice each passage throughout the year.

Check out the complete bundle of Decodable Reading Passages for Short Vowels and get everything you need to use this resource in your classroom today!