Simple Hands-On Reading Activities for Kindergarten will Rev Up Reading

Reading is a fundamental skill for students to have. While we focus a lot on phonics and knowing how to read in kindergarten, it’s important to also work on reading comprehension. I was talking to a friend one day. She was telling me how frustrated she was with her daughter’s kindergarten teacher because she kept sending the same books home. My friend had talked to the teacher about getting different, higher level books, but the teacher just said this is where my friend’s daughter needed to be. When she was venting this to me, I asked her, “Well, does she understand what she’s reading?” My friend paused. She had only thought about how well her child could read. This changed the conversation. Reading comprehension is vital to being a great reader. When you use hands-on reading activities for kindergarten, you make reading comprehension fun! 

What is Reading Comprehension? 

Often when people think of reading, they simply think of phonics. While knowing your sounds and being able to sound out CVC words and other sight words is important, if you don’t know what the story is about, it doesn’t do much good. Think about all the children’s books that you have read. Most of them have a theme that centers around good character. If students don’t understand what they read, then that message is lost on them. In fact, some students might pick up on the bad behavior that was shown in the book. 

Reading comprehension helps students understand what they are reading. It seems like they are just spilling out facts, but those facts are important. You can’t tell a good story without characters, background, conflict, etc. When students learn with hands-on reading activities for kindergarten to comprehend the text, they become better readers and storytellers. 

Why Teach with Hands-On Reading Activities for Kindergarten 

Kindergarten is all about learning how to read right? So what I should be focusing on is phonics and fluency. Well, yes for sure you should be focusing on that. However, you need to focus on comprehension as well because that skill will help them understand texts in other areas as well as in future grades. When you use hands-on activities for kindergarten, you’ll see your students will start to understand story problems in math more or the various cycles of water, life, etc. that you teach during science time. Comprehension goes far beyond reading. These hands-on activities can be cross curricular. 

How to Teach Reading Comprehension to Kindergarten 

Teaching reading comprehension should be something you do in a variety of ways because you have a variety of learners. Some students can just answer the questions verbally, some can write it out, and some will need multiple choice options. Giving your students hands-on reading  activities for kindergarten will give them several different ways to practice reading comprehension. Much like most skills, the more you practice comprehension, the better you get! You might want to start simply with multiple choice questions. Then move to writing out the answer. Next move to verbally answering the question. Once students are doing well with this, spice it up and have them act it out or play a game of charades. 

Hands-On Reading Activities for Kindergarten 

One of the best ways to boost comprehension in your classroom is with hands-on reading activities for kindergarten. These activities are fun and interactive. Because of this, students don’t realize they are working because they are having so much fun. You can use reading passages or decodable readers for these fun hands-on activities! So, what hands-on reading activities for kindergarten can you do? Check out the list below for some fun ideas that you can incorporate in your classroom this school year! 

Charades/Act It Out 

One way to help students with reading comprehension is with a reading activity for kindergarten that gets them up and moving! You can write down comprehension questions or whisper it to a student. Then, they act out the answer. If your students aren’t confident to do this alone, you can also have them act out a part of a story you read in groups. 

This helps get students up in front of the class which can help with that fear early on. You can also see where students aren’t understanding the material and review with them. When you review, you might learn there’s a word they don’t know the meaning of or are misunderstanding. Finding these things can make teaching comprehension much easier. 

Write It Out 

Another great activity is to write out what you read. This can be done independently or by passing a piece of paper around and having each student in the group to answer one question. You can also use this as a relay game with the papers up on the board or you can play fix and fly. 

With fix and fly, you have a question on three pieces of paper. One student runs up, grabs the top one, brings it back to their group, answers it, hangs it back up, and then goes to the second. Once they have all three done, you check them. If they are incorrect they have to try again. If they are all correct, that team gets first place. 

While these games are fun, you want to have passages and questions to go with it. Look no further than this Kindergarten Reading Comprehension Bundle. With this bundle, you will get 20 year-long/anytime passages, 20 spring, summer, fall, and winter passages, and 20 back to school passages. How can you beat that? 

Draw It Out 

If you have students who love to draw, ask them a question and have them draw everything they can remember about the scene. This is a great way to talk about important details in a story and those can be left out. If you have students who like to draw, this will be a hands-on reading activity for kindergarten favorite! 

Practice Makes Perfect 

No matter what, your students are going to need practice. Giving them hands-on reading activities for kindergarten doesn’t have to be complex. By giving them practice during morning meetings, using them for fast finishers, or putting them in your literacy centers. This freebie reading comprehension activity is perfect practice for your students! If you and your students love them, you can always find more in my reading comprehension bundle! 

Reading comprehension is an important part of learning how to read. When you teach comprehension in class, you want to make sure that you are using hands-on activities for kindergarten to keep them engaged while they are learning a valuable skill. However, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Make sure you check out the resources we have available at Phonics to Fluency for reading comprehension to get you started!