Reading Comprehension – Health
Five Senses Worksheets
A reading lesson about the five senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste – and how each sense helps us experience the world. Includes comprehension questions and a vocabulary check on related terms like visually impaired, hearing impaired, and paralyzed.
Grade Level
Grades 1-3
Pages
Reading + Questions
Subject
Reading Comprehension
Format
Printable PDF
What This Lesson Teaches
Students read a six-page passage that introduces each of the five senses in turn – sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell – then explains what life is like when one of those senses is reduced or absent. The passage names each related term clearly: visually impaired, hearing impaired, paralyzed, and independent.
Comprehension questions follow the reading and check whether students can recall the five senses, identify the body part associated with each sense, and use the vocabulary terms from the passage in context.
What Students Practice
- Reading a multi-paragraph informational passage with one main idea per section
- Naming the five senses and matching each to the body part that delivers it
- Health and disability vocabulary – visually impaired, hearing impaired, paralyzed, independent, sign language, seeing-eye dog
- Tongue-region taste mapping – sweet on the tip, salty/sour on the sides, bitter at the back
- Comprehension questions that require returning to the passage to find the answer
How Teachers Use This Worksheet
This is a strong cross-curricular reading – it works in a reading block as informational text and in a science or health block as a unit on the human body. The disability-aware language makes it useful for community-and-empathy lessons too.
- Read aloud as a whole class for grade 1; assign as guided reading for grades 2-3
- Pair with a science lesson on the body parts that house each sense
- Use the comprehension questions for whole-class discussion or as written exit-ticket work
- Pre-teach visually impaired, hearing impaired, and paralyzed before reading – these are the highest-leverage vocabulary terms in the passage
- Extend with a hands-on five-senses scavenger hunt: students name something they see, hear, feel, smell, and taste in the room
Common Student Mistakes to Watch For
- Confusing blind with visually impaired – the passage uses visually impaired as the proper term and explains why
- Mismatching senses to body parts – especially touch, which uses skin (not just hands)
- Missing the tongue-region detail – the four taste regions are easy to skim past
- Treating the disability sections as off-topic – they are core content, not asides; the passage uses them to deepen what each sense actually does
Download the Worksheet
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