Why Assign Reading Passages?
The ReadWorks library of thousands of curated nonfiction and fiction passages gives you all you need to have your students read widely and often. By supplementing your instructional units in ELA (see our Book Studies for hand-curated text sets aligned to popular books and plays), science (see our NGSS alignment), and/or social studies with topically-aligned ReadWorks passages, you can provide your students even more reading practice while increasing their background knowledge across subjects in support of reading comprehension.
Vocabulary knowledge is also one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension. Each reading passage has hand-selected Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary words for students to explore within the context of their reading.
Multiple research studies show the positive impact of regularly assigning ReadWorks passages to your students:
Vocabulary knowledge is also one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension. Each reading passage has hand-selected Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary words for students to explore within the context of their reading.
Multiple research studies show the positive impact of regularly assigning ReadWorks passages to your students:
- In a 2020 study, greater use of ReadWorks reading passages was positively related to increased growth in students’ standardized reading test scores.
- In a 2022 study, students benefited from regularly doing our question sets, as their multiple-choice-question correct rate increases as they do more question sets.
How to Use Reading Passages
Under Content, use the filters on the left to search by type of passage, grade level, and topic to find the exact right passages to supplement what you are studying with your students. Passages also come with text-dependent question sets so your students can practice rereading and digging into the text. Not sure where to start? Check out our Book Studies and our top 10 monthly recommendations.
ReadWorks kindergarten and 1st grade passages are written at students' listening-level comprehension to build their background knowledge and vocabulary and should be heard aloud. They can be paired with other resources that focus on word recognition. Try our read-aloud protocol with your students to deepen their language comprehension. Early readers can also benefit from the Scope & Sequence that includes ReadWorks passages paired with Whole Phonics decodable texts.
ReadWorks kindergarten and 1st grade passages are written at students' listening-level comprehension to build their background knowledge and vocabulary and should be heard aloud. They can be paired with other resources that focus on word recognition. Try our read-aloud protocol with your students to deepen their language comprehension. Early readers can also benefit from the Scope & Sequence that includes ReadWorks passages paired with Whole Phonics decodable texts.
Differentiate with Reading Passages
Teachers can differentiate in their classrooms by assigning or printing related reading passages at different levels for their students. Students never see the grade level—online or printed out. Teachers can also assign StepReads, which are less complex versions of an original article, or eBooks, which combine ReadWorks passages with rich illustrations and expressive human-voice audio narration.
Introduce It to Your Students
Share this video with your students so they can learn all about reading and answering questions on ReadWorks.