Reading Passages

Imagine a simple worksheet with non-fiction reading passages where students practice seven skills: goal setting, reading fluency, reading comprehension, inferencing, sight word review, graphing (math) and interpreting data. Now imagine those reading passages including interesting facts and/or scientific facts for students to learn about. What?! That’s right!

These reading passages are one of a kind because they have a simple, clean format yet are jammed-packed with learning! These non-fiction reading passages include interesting and scientific or historical facts. This freebie is a sample from my September Reading Passages. The passages start out pretty simple and easy to read starting in August (the beginning of the school year) and gradually increase in difficulty as students become more proficient in reading over the year.

What's included in the Monthly Reading Passages Bundle?

1. January Reading Passages - Weather

2. February Reading Passages - Valentine's Day, Presidents, Groundhog's Day

3. March Reading Passages - Polar Animals

4. April Reading Passages - Insects, Earth Day, April Showers

5. May Reading Passages - Flowers

6. June Reading Passages - Ocean Animals, Father's Day

7. July Reading Passages - American Symbols, Monuments, National Parks

8. August Reading Passages - Zoo Animals

9. September Reading Passages - Apples, School Supplies

10. October Reading Passages - Pumpkins, Nocturnal Animals, Columbus, Fire Safety

11. November Reading Passages - Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, Elections

12. December Reading Passages - Christmas, Pearl Harbor, and More

+ Bonus 72 Monthly Reading Graphs to Choose From for FREE!

There are six graph choices (5-100 WPM, 50-145 WPM, 85-180 WPM, 100-195 WPM, 150-245 WPM, and blank graphs to fill in with your own numbers) included for each month of the year for a total of 72 graphs. A great way to keep track of students' progress throughout the year and to show parents at conferences!

There are 20 worksheets included along with 20 answer keys in each set. Each reading passage is between 40-70 words long. Students begin by setting a words per minute (WPM) goal. Next, they are timed reading the passage three times and calculate their WPM scores (formulas are included to make it easy…teachers can either teach students how to use a calculator or do this part for them. If too difficult or time consuming, simply have the student record the number of seconds it took to read and do not convert them to a WPM score). Then comes the fun part where students get to place dot stickers (or use a crayon to color dots) on the target to show where their score landed (close = within 10 WPM, very close = within 5 WPM, bullseye = reached or exceeded goal).

Once students finish reading the passage three times they graph 5 sight words based on the number of times they were used in the passage. Have students highlight each word in a different color in the passage. Then students read and answer 5 questions about the passage (reading comprehension) and about the graph (interpreting data).

These worksheets would make great morning work activities to get the brain moving first thing in the morning! They are also engaging because they are interdisciplinary, incorporating reading, math and science! Some teachers like to use them for progress monitoring and keep them in a student portfolio to show parents at conferences.

So Many Ways to Use Them!