Read and Do: Follow the Instructions

A strip of eight animal pictures runs across the top of this 1st grade read-and-do worksheet, with a small flag at the left end and an arrow showing the direction to count: a donkey, a seagull, a swan, a whale, another seagull, a fox, a leopard, a second whale. Under the strip are six numbered sentences, each with a little dashed box at the right. Circle the first picture. Underline the second seagull. Put a check mark under the last picture. Cross out the swan. Write how many seagulls there are. Underline the leopard. The child reads a sentence, does exactly that to the picture row with a pencil, and checks the box to show the row is done.

Every sentence uses a different pencil action, and that is the point: circle, underline, cross out, check mark and write each demand that the child read to the end of the sentence and not act on the first noun. Some sentences name an animal (the swan), some name a place in the row (the first picture, the last picture), and one asks for a count written in a box, so the same short strip is read five or six different ways. The teacher is watching for a child who circles the first animal named in every row — that child is decoding words, not yet reading instructions — and for the check box being ticked before the action is done.

The page prints in color on one sheet and is finished in a few minutes, which makes it a good independent-reading task while a group works with the teacher. The read-and-circle page keeps one action only, the two-step page puts two actions in each sentence, and the true-or-false page turns the instructions into statements to judge.