Interactive Activities for First Grade in Reading

Hone first graders' reading skills with interactive activities.

Reading is an essential skill for success in all areas of life. During first grade, reading instruction becomes very structured, as students utilize the letter-sound recognition skills they developed during preschool and kindergarten to form words and read sentences and short books. To promote fluency and comprehension in reading, present your first-grade students with interactive reading activities.

Choral Reading

Engage your students in choral reading. As the name suggests, in choral reading, the whole class or a small group of students reads aloud in unison. To employ this strategy, use a big book, write text on a large chart or distribute copies of the same book to students. If you're using a big book or a chart, point to words as the group chorally reads them. If you're using individual texts, have students follow along in their books by pointing to the individual words as they read aloud. This tactic provides support for struggling and reluctant readers and provides a model for fluent reading.

Paired Reading

Paired reading involves pairs of students reading a text aloud to one another. When using this interactive reading activity, pair two students up -- a higher-level reader and a lower-level reader -- or the teacher and a student can read together. In this approach, the higher-level reader begins by reading a paragraph or a page, modeling fluency, intonation and tactics to decode unknown words. The lower-level reader follows suit and reads a paragraph or page aloud, with the higher-level reader providing support, if necessary.

Echo Reading

Echo reading is another interactive reading activity that can be used in a first-grade classroom. To use echo reading, print a text on a large chart or use a big book. Gather students around the text. Read the text aloud, pointing to each word as you read it. Immediately after you read a sentence or a passage aloud, students read the same sentence or passage aloud. While students are echoing your reading, point to the individual words. This approach builds confidence in readers.

Gap-Filling Reading

This interactive reading activity promotes predicting what will happen in a text. Read a story aloud to students that features several repeated verses or rhymes -- "The Gingerbread Man" is an example of a book that contains a repeated phrase throughout the book. After reading the book a few times, or reading the first few pages of the book, students will become familiar with the repeated phrases. Read the text again, but stop when you reach the repeated verses. Prompt students to fill in the gap of your reading by inserting the appropriate words.

References

• Reading Rockets: Choral Reading
• Education: Echo Reading