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​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