Free ESL Reading Activity Grade 1

Sara's New Friend — Reading Passage & Comprehension

About This Resource

A ten-sentence reading passage following one child through a day of greetings and meeting a new classmate, paired with five comprehension questions (true/false, picture-circle, and number-circle), plus a full answer key.

Overview

The passage follows a fictional example child, Sara, through all ten greetings taught in this unit, from saying "Good morning" to saying "Good night," including meeting and introducing herself to a new classmate named Lily along the way — giving every student the same shared story to read regardless of their own real-life experience meeting someone new. The comprehension page then checks recall and sequencing with three true/false statements, a picture-circle question about what Sara says when she meets Lily, and a number-circle question about how many greetings appear in the story.

Resource Details

Subject: ESL
Topic: Reading - Sara's New Friend
Category: Reading
File Type: PDF
File Size: 136.3 KB
Published: 02 Sep 2026
Downloads: 0

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Grade 1 45-55 Minutes Reading

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to read a short connected passage about greetings and meeting someone new, and answer literal and sequencing comprehension questions about it.

How to Use This Resource

Read the story out loud together, pointing to each word.
Discuss the pictures alongside the text as you go.
Complete the five comprehension questions on page 2.
Check work with the answer key.

Classroom Activity Ideas

After reading, have pairs of students act out Sara and Lily's introduction from the story using only the pictures as prompts, without looking at the text.

Differentiation

Support: read the passage aloud to students rather than having them read independently, and allow pointing to pictures instead of writing full answers.

Extension: have students write one additional true or false sentence of their own about Sara's day for a partner to answer.

Assessment

Score out of 5 using the answer key; use results to check both vocabulary recall and understanding of time-order words like "before" and "after."

Teacher Tips

Read the passage as a full unit review near the end of the week rather than earlier in the unit — because it covers all ten greetings in order, it works best once every greeting word has already been taught individually.