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Valentine’s Day, a holiday about love, seems to instead fill a large portion of the population with dread. If romance isn’t your thing, you feel doomed. If you’re unpartnered, you feel left out. If you’re a teacher, you’re bracing yourself for a day of mayhem and over-sugared students. And if you’re a parent of school-aged children, your living space is suddenly littered with dozens of valentines your children need to address. Does anyone actually love this holiday? Read more

Do you have students who seem more focused on rate than on overall reading improvement? As students build fluency, it’s natural for them to them to try to read faster. When they become too focused on speed, however, they often lose accuracy and expression. Read more

In their daily lives, most adults read silently far more frequently than they read aloud. The same is true of older students. Silent reading comprehension is, after all, the skill needed to perform well on tests and in academics in general. Does this mean teachers of older students should stop spending time on oral reading fluency? Literacy expert Dr. Tim Shanahan addresses this question in his blog post, Fluency Instruction for Older Kids, Really? We completely agree with his response—and so does the research. Read more

I'll never forget the time my middle child, at age four, found a flashcard with the word “flabbergasted” on it. I read the card to him and told him the meaning of the word. He started bringing the card everywhere he went and belly laughing whenever he showed it to someone. Some nights, he even slept with it under his pillow. Read more

Our first Star of the Month of 2026 is Grethel, a 5th grader at Estrella Mountain Elementary in Goodyear, AZ, who is "flying" through Read Live stories and has moved up three levels since August. Here is what Grethel's teacher, Ms. Johnson, wrote about her: Read more

Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot likes to tell the story of a little boy who went from struggling to fluent using the Read Naturally program. When Candyce asked the boy how he got to be such a good reader, he said with a smirk, “It was nothing you did.” Rather than be offended by his brutal honesty, Candyce was delighted. The boy was taking due credit for his own accomplishment. He had come to understand that he’d possessed the tools for success all along. Having found the confidence and fortitude to master a huge challenge, he could now draw on those qualities again and again—without his teacher’s help. Read more

The easiest Read Naturally stories to read are often the hardest ones to write. Many people are surprised to learn this. Isn’t it easier to write a quick level 1.0 story than it is to research and write a complex level 8.0 story? Read more

My eighth grader, Adam, refused to participate in his piano recital this year because he hadn’t learned his piece well enough. I can confirm that he hadn’t practiced much and was making lots of mistakes. Even so, a few days before the recital, I pleaded with him, “Can you just go up there and play it as best as you can? It’s okay if you make mistakes!”—to which he responded, as I knew he would, “No way. That’s too embarrassing.” Read more

We're closing in on winter break, so naturally your students are calm, on-task, and doing their best learning... right?

More likely, they seem to have entered "break mode" a few days ago. We know how these things go. That's why we've pulled together some recommendations to: 1) get you through the rest of 2024, and 2) keep your students reading over the break. Read more

Congratulations to Leyla, our December Star of the Month! Leyla is an 11th grader at Rock Brook School in Skillman, New Jersey, who has used Read Naturally's GATE program to transform from a non-reader into a reader! Here is what her teacher, Ms. Rina, shared about her: Read more