First Grade Reading Response Center Activities

This reading response resource for first grade includes lesson plans, printable activities for all year long, and kid-friendly directions! 

This resource provides an organized system for managing a reading response center. The materials will help you teach independence AND engage your first grade students in meaningful reading response activities like:
- Drawing and writing to answer comprehension questions 
- Creating book reviews and recommendations to share with their peers
- Making a “Character Scrapbook” to record information about a favorite character
- Creating nonfiction lapbooks to demonstrate learning

These materials are very flexible and can be used many different ways -- as independent work, in centers (reading response center, writing center, or as part of D5), or as whole-class activities. 

Students do NOT have to be strong readers and writers in order to be successful with these activities!

This resource is for you if you want to:
- Have students respond to texts in a variety of meaningful, developmentally-appropriate ways
- Help students REMEMBER what they should be drawing/writing about with instructions videos that read them the prompt and an example response
- Get students excited about books and independent reading by having them recommend books to each other
- Easily differentiate activities to meet a range of needs
- Give your students kid-friendly directions so they don’t forget how to do each activity
- Get organized with a schedule for introducing materials throughout the year
- Stop spending hours searching for reading response activities - and have everything you need in one place! 

This resource may not be for you if:
- You are looking for general writing center activities that do not include reading response (you can find writing center materials HERE)

Here’s what’s included:
- 10 lesson plans to teach procedures and routines for responding to texts through drawing and writing
- An editable schedule you can use to plan your reading response activities throughout the year
- Planning and writing tools (sentence starters to help students plan their work with a partner, vocabulary poster for writing about text, transition words poster, and reading response checklists and rubrics) 
- Printable reading response activities, the majority of which require little to no prep (see the list below for more details)
- 270 total pages of materials (carefully organized into separate, smaller files, with an instructions video and photos)

All of the following activities include introductory lesson plans and kid-friendly directions:
- 22 different prompt sheets (+ versions with sentence starters + example responses + a video for each prompt that reads students the prompt and an example response)
- 12 different options for opinion writing about books (reviews, recommendations, posters, a flip book, book talks) + an example for each one 
- “Character Scrapbook” template for having students record information about a character while reading or listening to books in a series 
- Nonfiction lapbooks project (a template for animal “research” + a template for any nonfiction topic) 
- “Book Club” materials for having students read a text, respond to a question on one of the templates, and then discuss the text in a small group setting with other students who read the same text

If you’d like to incorporate technology, digital templates and instructions for the prompts and book reviews/recommendations are included.

Looking for more literacy center activities for First Grade? Read about my complete literacy centers bundle for First Grade HERE!

Please contact Alison at Alison@LearningAtThePrimaryPond.com if you have any questions about the materials!

Total Pages: 270 pages