Vocalic /r/ paragraphs

Vocalic -AR Reading Paragraph

Farm Life

When you live on a farm, your day starts early in the morning. The alarm goes off around 4 a.m. It is always dark outside when we wake up, but the stars are pretty to look at.

Some days it feels like your heart needs a jump start. My dog, Barney, helps me wake up by licking my face. Sometimes he will bark at me too. He makes a great guard dog.

Once we get our hearts going, we go downstairs and eat a big breakfast. When breakfast is over, we pick up the yard a little and head to the barn. Working in the barn is like being in the army, there are a lot of rules to stay safe. The barn is quiet in the mornings.

When morning chores are finished it is time for lunch. After lunch we work with the crops until dinner. After dinner we relax from a hard day's work. We like to look at the stars, play marbles and cards, and sometimes we take a ride in the car. Then we go to bed and get ready to do it all again in the morning.

Vocalic -ER Reading Paragraph

Favorite Teacher

My science teacher, Mr. Kerr, is my most favorite teacher in the world. Every class period we do the coolest experiments. We have made paper planes, studied what spiders eat for dinner, learned the molecular differences between dirt and butter, and looked at germs under a microscope.

At first, most of our class was nervous to do all of these crazy things, but after studying butter and dirt we were amazed at how cool science is. We told Mr. Kerr our concerns and he reassured us if we would give the experiments a chance, we wouldn't be sorry.

Mr. Kerr is dedicated too. Last year he hurt his shoulder playing basketball. He had to have surgery on it and I'm sure he was in a lot of pain. He didn't care though. He still came to school and taught our class how to make a liquid into a solid by stirring specific materials together. Then he had us climb a ladder and pour it off onto the floor.

He also likes to surprise our class with opportunities to learn. During November, we had a lesson about what has to happen to a turkey before we can eat it. The class thought it would be gross, and some of it was, but we learned a lot about the process. The girl next to me and I agree that we will miss Mr. Kerr's science class.

Vocalic -OR Reading Paragraph

Storm Chasing

Jordan has a cool but dangerous job. He is a storm chaser. He never gets bored. A few times per month, he and his four person crew jump in their cars and chase tornadoes. Jordan wasn't always interested in storms though, he has an interesting story about why he became a storm chaser.

He grew up farming corn with his mom and dad. He rode horses, played sports, and was a typical kid. When he was 17 years old, a tornado touched down in the city he lived in. It traveled four miles south of town and wiped out his family's farm.

Jordan and his family hid in their storm cellar and were not hurt from the tornado, but the tornado destroyed everything his family had. His family was poor for a few years following the tornado while he and his family looked for ways to earn money. Jordan made doors, worked at the grocery store, and even sold popcorn to make money to pay for food.

It was a hard time for Jordan and his family. As a result, Jordan decided to go to college to become a meteorologist. He studied weather and weather patterns. He wanted to learn how tornadoes moved so that he could warn people when they were coming.

About one year ago, all of his hard work paid off when he received funding for his research. Many storm chasers don't make much money, but Jordan didn't care about that. He had lived without a lot of money. Jordan wanted to help people. He was excited about how the money he received would help gather enough information to help more people in the future.