Grade 1 Phonics, Decoding & Spelling Patterns: Find & Circle Words
4 printable 1st Grade phonics worksheets on Find & Circle Words. The first three are free to download; All Access opens all 4.
Practice pages support a program; they are not the lesson. These sheets reinforce Phonics, Decoding, and Early Fluency — Grade 1, the complete K–5 reading curriculum from Faith Readers. See every program →
Choose a worksheet below, then open the large preview to zoom.
Teaching Find & Circle Words
What it is
Each item shows a picture and three spellings of its name — mop, mopp, mope — and the child circles the correct one. Choosing between near-misses makes a child read the whole word instead of guessing from the first letter and the picture.
When a child is ready
Use it once the child can already read the words in question; the task is judging a spelling, not decoding a new word.
If they struggle
When the wrong one is circled, read all three choices aloud exactly as they are written — mope really does say mope — so the ear throws two of them out. For choices that sound identical (bux, buks, box), name the pattern the child already knows: /ks/ at the end of a short word is written x.
Worksheet preview
The whole page is fitted when opened. Use +/−, click the page, or pinch to inspect details.