Over the last year, I’ve been creating monthly holiday themed reading comprehension passages and I recently added my Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages for Kindergarten – 5th Grade to my store. I’m very excited to share these with you because comprehension is such an important part of reading. The month of November feels a little more settled with Halloween behind you and it being typically around 3 weeks of school. With it being a short month, my Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages are the perfect addition to your small groups, independent reading time, or work that is sent home. These Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages allow your Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade, 4th Grade, and 5th Grade students to build comprehension skills all month long.
5 Reasons to Focus on Comprehension
You are most likely already working on reading comprehension in your classroom, but do you actually know why you’re focusing on it? It is one of the components of the Big 5 of reading (in addition to phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary). It quite possibly may be the most important one, simply because the whole point of reading is to actually understand what is being read. So why is it so important to focus on comprehension daily, in your reading block?
5 Reasons to Focus on Comprehension
- So students understand what they read.
- Exposure to vocabulary.
- Improve critical thinking skills.
- Improve writing skills.
- Boost confidence.
Now that you have five main reasons to focus on comprehension, let’s take a deeper look at each one!
- The first one is the most obvious- of course we want kids to understand what they’re reading…that’s the whole point of reading, after all! However, it’s still an important one to keep at the front of your mind! When readers are good at comprehending, this works across all avenues. In all subject areas, from your science passages to your math word problems, and outside of the content areas, too. If students are able to comprehend, they can better understand their peers in different situations, too.
- Vocabulary is one of the Big 5 of Reading. If it isn’t a major focus of yours yet…a focus on comprehension makes vocabulary an instant secondary focus. Kids need to be exposed to new vocabulary- whether content specific, or simple everyday words they may never have heard before. The more they’re exposed to new vocabulary, the greater their background knowledge becomes, which in turn makes them have better comprehension of future readings.
- This is a biggie! Especially these days- we need our kids to effectively apply critical thinking skills– in their learning AND in everyday life. This includes the ability to make logical predictions, learn how to make inferences based on information read, identifying connections between texts or in their own lives, recognize problems and solutions, and the overall ability to understand and analyze a text.
- Let’s be real- SO many kids need to improve their writing skills. When students pay attention to a text (the structure, types of words used, etc.) and actually comprehend different kinds of texts, they then naturally apply it to their own writing.
- Any time I can, I recommend doing something to boost a child’s confidence! If a student can successfully comprehend what they’re reading, it is such a confidence booster. Not only did they read it, they can tell you about it! So instead of staring at written response questions and having no clue what to write, they start to feel confident in their abilities to understand how to answer the questions.
Build Comprehension Skills with Thanksgiving Reading Passages
If you’re convinced that you need to focus more on comprehension, you can help your students improve comprehension skills all month long with these engaging Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages!
You’ll be building comprehension skills in no time with these Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages. They are ready for you to use. You’ll simply download, print, and make copies.
The 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade, 4th Grade, and 5th Grade Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages are a little lengthier than you may typically expect. The reason for this is that I wanted to tell actual stories that would be relatable to each reader. Sometimes it is tough to tell a full story in a very short passage. With the longer length of these Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages, you’ll be able to use the same passage for multiple days. Students shouldn’t be expected to read the entire passage in one short sitting. Instead, they can finish one portion of the Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages at a time. After they read each section of the passage, they can then respond to one of the comprehension questions. You can verbally discuss the shorter portion of each passage first, before having students complete the written response questions for the entire Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages.
Lengthy passages are also a great way to help prepare students for reading chapter books or longer excerpts in content area subjects. These Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages will help build comprehension skills with engaging topics. Your students will be able to concentrate on the five reasons to focus on comprehension using these Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages.
- Students will show what they know after reading each passage as they complete the follow up written response questions.
- They will learn new vocabulary that will be specific to Thanksgiving.
- Readers will improve critical thinking skills as they make connections to their other texts they’re reading about Thanksgiving. They will also be able to make logical inferences and identify problems and solutions, as well as other text analyzing strategies.
- Students will be writing their answers and applying their improved writing skills to those responses. Also, when they complete other writing assignments in November, you can remind them to think about passages they’ve read and how they can make their own writing more similar to those texts.
- This is an important time of year to boost readers’ confidence. When they successfully respond to the questions included in these Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages, they’ll feel ready to read other texts as well.
Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension
If you’re ready to add engaging Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages to your literacy activities in November, check out each grade level set for my Kindergarten-5th Grade below!
Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages:
Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade, 4th Grade, 5th Grade
Holiday Reading Comprehension Passages
Are you thinking about how you can actually focus closely on comprehension throughout the school year?
I have holiday reading comprehension passages bundles for each grade level K-5, as well as bigger bundles. Each one includes holiday themes so that you always have something to use with your students to build comprehension skills throughout the year. They follow the same format as the Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages, so there is nothing new to learn for the students when you grab them to use each month.
These bundles include national holidays for various months of the school year. They really make it simple to have relatable topics to discuss with engaging comprehension passages. So, if you want more than just the Thanksgiving Reading Comprehension Passages, you can check out my bundles with the links below!
Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade, 4th Grade, 5th Grade, Kindergarten-2nd Grade, 3rd-5th Grade
Want more Thanksgiving themed activities for your classroom?
Check out my blog post 17 of the Best Thanksgiving Picture Books for Read Alouds. This includes not only amazing picture books you’ll want to add into your rotation this year, but also Thanksgiving Phonics Games and Fluency Activities, as well as additional Thanksgiving Reading Passages to boost confidence in your early readers!
If you need more K-5 passages to use with your readers, download my free Fluency Passages. These will help your readers improve their fluency AND comprehension skills!
