Read and Do: First, Second, Between — Find the Picture by Its Place

Position words carry every sentence on this 1st grade read-and-do page. The row of eight fruits at the top — a pineapple, a blackberry, an avocado, a fig, a second blackberry, a second fig, two persimmons — starts at a small flag, and the child counts from the flag to find each picture by its place before doing anything to it. Cross out the last picture. Cross out the second blackberry. Circle the picture between the pineapple and the avocado. Put a check mark under the second fig. Circle the picture to the right of the avocado. Underline the first picture. Six sentences, six dashed boxes to check, four different pencil actions.

The ordinal is read inside a full sentence here, which is what separates this page from a worksheet that simply labels 1st, 2nd, 3rd. The second blackberry is not the second picture; it is the second of the blackberries, and a child has to count only the blackberries to find it. Between and to the right of ask for the same kind of thinking with two anchors instead of one. The flag settles the direction so that left and right mean the same thing for every child. The teacher listens for the counting — first, second — and watches for the child who circles the first fig when the sentence said the second.

A single printed sheet, done with a pencil, and quick to check because every answer is a mark on the strip. It sits after the base read-and-do page in this family, which uses first and last but not between or to the right of, and pairs naturally with an ordinal numbers page if the class is learning the words themselves. The two-step page combines a position cue with a second action in one sentence.