Date: 201503
Local time of day: 1201-1800
Location: DEN.Airport, CO
Flight conditions: VMC
Weather elements / visibility: Turbulence
Aircraft: EMB ERJ 170/175 ER/LR
Operator: Air Carrier
Operating under: Part 121
Flight plan: IFR
Mission: Passenger
Flight phase: Initial Approach
Airspace: Class B DEN
Reporter organization: Air Carrier
Reporter function: Pilot Not Flying; Captain
Reporter qualification: Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Human factors: Situational Awareness
Second reporter function: Pilot Flying; First Officer
Anomaly: Deviation - Altitude Excursion From Assigned Altitude; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Detector: Person Air Traffic Control; Person Flight Crew
When detected: In-flight
Result: Flight Crew Became Reoriented; Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Contributing factors: Human Factors
Primary problem: Human Factors

Narrative: Day 4 of a 4 day with a new First Officer (FO). The FO mentioned before departure that he'd been off on vacation for a few weeks prior to this trip. We had two flights that day so I told him he could pick which one he wanted to fly or could fly both to get comfortable again. He elected to fly this leg and the flight was uneventful until we began to descend to DEN. Moderate turbulence in VMC for the last 10 min of the flight. As Pilot Monitoring (PM) I asked for lower and was given 8;000 feet abeam the airport where it finally became only light turbulence. We were given a base turn; called the airport in sight; and were cleared for the visual approach to RWY 35L. The FO lined up for the runway; asked for flaps 1 and began a slow descent while I contacted tower and obtained our landing clearance. I then noticed that we were approaching 1;200 feet AGL outside of the FAF and we were below the glideslope (in VMC). I alerted the FO that we were low and to level off while we finished configuring the aircraft. He did so but the aircraft briefly descended to 1;000 feet AGL before he completely leveled off. We configured the aircraft and were stabilized and landed uneventfully. We briefed and successfully alerted the Flight Attendants (FA) early coming into DEN due to it being a mountainous airport. However; we should have briefed the high airport elevation during the approach briefing so we would have paid extra attention to the RA which would have told us we were lower than we thought.


Second narrative: As I began to slow the aircraft down I realized that we were too low and at approximately the same time that the Captain stated the same. I had already begun arresting the descent by turning off the auto pilot and hand flying the rest of the approach; noting that we were in Flight Path Angle (FPA) mode and that the altitude window was lower than the 7;000 feet I intended to set. Right after that ATC gave us a low altitude alert call and we continued to a normal approach and landing. After we arrived at the gate; we debriefed the approach and although it was a visual approach and the subsequent landing was normal it felt prudent to make this report.By me being more aggressive in the monitoring of my altitude selection as either I misled my intended target initially or hit the altitude select knob in error at some point. A contributing factor to this may also be having 19 days in between this flight and my last.


Synopsis: ERJ-170 flight crew reported descending below the glideslope to 1;000 feet AGL on a visual approach to DEN.