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Winter break is a couple days away. It’s almost time to celebrate! Before you release your students to make mischief, merriment and hopefully lots of hot chocolate, we urge you to ask them just one question: “Who will read with you over break?” Read more

Alex V. is our Read Naturally Star of the Month. He is a fourth grader at George Brown Jr. Elementary in San Bernardino, CA. Alex was nominated and chosen for the commitment and progress he has shown in his reading with Read Naturally Live. Read more

Research tells us that in order to become fluent, students need to learn to decode unknown words accurately and automatically. An understanding of phonics is what makes this possible. Earlier this year, we explained how our QPS diagnostic phonics assessment can quickly and easily alert you to students who need additional phonics support. Last month, we highlighted our popular GATE for phonics program, which is an ideal phonics intervention for small groups of early readers. But what if you’re looking for a phonics intervention that students of all ages can use mostly independently? Read more

​Thanksgiving is a day to reflect on what we’re grateful for. Full bellies and full hearts leave people everywhere feeling thankful for what they have—and wanting for nothing more. So naturally, the day after Thanksgiving is a time to… make a wish list and go shopping? Have you ever noticed that the rapid progression from Thanksgiving to Black Friday to Christmas can quickly take many of us from grateful to greedy? Read more

When Candyce Ihnot developed the Read Naturally Strategy back in 1989, her students were the only ones using it. It might have stayed this way, had it not been for the dedicated teachers who saw promise in Candyce’s results and decided to give the strategy a try with their own students. Pleased with how well it worked, these teachers spread the word to other teachers. This is how, eventually, the Read Naturally Strategy came to help millions of struggling students read fluently. Read more

Congratulations Valenee V.! Valenee's dedication to learning has earned her the Read Naturally Star of the Month award for October. Valenee is a fifth-grade student at Castle Elementary in Oakdale, MN. Read more

An American Public Media documentary that went viral last year makes the strong argument that better phonics instruction will greatly improve our nation’s literacy statistics. According to the report, entitled, Hard Words: Why aren’t kids being taught to read?: “[A] big takeaway from decades of scientific research is that, while we use our eyes to read, the starting point for reading is sound. What a child must do to become a reader is to figure out how the words she hears and knows how to say connect to the letters on the page. Writing is a code humans invented to represent speech sounds. Kids have to crack that code to become readers.” In order to crack the code, children need to learn how letters represent speech sounds. In other words, they need to understand phonics. Read more

If you want to get the most from your Read Naturally Live program and receive continuing education credits in the process, don’t miss the chance to attend one of our Read Naturally Live Hands-On Training and Strategy Workshops. This training will help you take advantage of Read Naturally Live’s many features and ensure the program is working well for all students. Read more

If your students have been properly trained in the Read Naturally program, and if you’ve checked their initial placement (Encore or Read Naturally Live), you’re now entering the sweet spot of a Read Naturally intervention. This is when your students’ progress and confidence will really start to soar. You now have the important task of monitoring their performance to accelerate learning. Read more

It is a remarkable thing to witness students improving in their reading fluency. Sometimes you can hear the difference from one day to the next. Students can hear the difference in their own voices too. More importantly, they can feel it—and it’s this feeling of confidence that motivates them to work even harder. The purpose of a Read Naturally intervention is for students to make as much fluency growth as possible from day to day, week to week, month to month. As an educator, how can you support and maximize this growth? Read more