1 Decodable Reading Passage
A short, decodable story embedding prefixes pre-, dis-, mis- words. Students read the passage then highlight all the target words.
Tom the turtle sat at his desk in class. He fixed his blue scarf and vest. It was time for a spelling pretest. A pretest helps you see what you need to learn. Tom wanted to do well, so he tried to think hard about each word. But the list was long and hard.
When the pretest was done, Tom looked at his paper. Oh no! He was sad that he had misspelled a lot of the words. It felt like every word was a mistake. Tom felt a deep dislike for the test. He put his head down on his desk.
"I just cannot spell," Tom told himself. "I will just give up on spelling. I cannot do it." Tom began to distrust his own brain. He felt like he would never get it right.
His good pal Rob the robin walked over. Rob wore a sky-blue shirt and a bow tie. "Why are you sad, Tom?" asked Rob.
"I had a bad time on the pretest," Tom said. "I will not fib to you. I am bad at this. I misplace the letters and mismatch the sounds. I feel like I misread everything."
"Do not mistrust yourself," Rob said kindly. "We can make it fun. You only mixed up a few letters. I have a trick that can help you."
"What trick?" asked Tom. He wanted to know, but he still had a big dislike for the hard words.
"We can sing them!" said Rob. On the walk home, Rob made up a silly song for each hard word. He made a quick tune for the word misprint. He made a loud tune for the word disobey. Each song had a fun beat to hum. Soon, Tom was humming and singing along.
The next day was the real test. Tom felt ready. He did not feel afraid. When he looked at a hard word, he hummed Rob's tune in his head. He did not misspell it. Tom got every word right, and he was so happy!
This story is part of Level 5. Get all 25 Level 5 illustrated mini-books in one print-ready file ($14) →
2 Word Sort
Cut out the word cards and sort them into the correct columns: Starts with pre- vs Starts with dis- or mis-.
3 Phrasing Practice Cards
Practice reading these phrases for fluency. Cut out the cards and read them quickly and smoothly.
4 RAN Chart (Rapid Naming)
Read each word in the grid as quickly as you can. Time yourself and try to beat your best time!
5 Word Search
Find and circle the prefixes pre-, dis-, mis- words hidden in the grid. Words go across, down, and diagonally — a fun way to reinforce prefixes pre-, dis-, mis- word recognition.
📖 More Prefixes pre-, dis-, mis- Stories
A new decodable story with the same prefixes pre-, dis-, mis- sounds — each comes with its own set of worksheets.
