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In recognition of Dyslexia Awareness Month, Read Naturally begins a series of articles designed to build knowledge around the learning disorder of dyslexia. This first article summarizes the remarkable discovery of the language disorder over 140 years ago.

Congratulations to our October Star of the Month, Shaniya! Shaniya is an eighth grader at Phoenix Academy Day School in Omaha, NE. Her teacher, Ms. Lucas, nominated her last year due to her amazing progress in Read Naturally.

Dyslexia is one of the main challenges we address here at Read Naturally. For dyslexia awareness month, we want to point you toward the myriad ways in which a Read Naturally intervention can help students with this learning difference.

Today’s guest post features the writing of Maria Hughes. Maria is a blogger, a parent, and someone who is very involved in the world of children’s books and child literacy. In this post, she sheds light on seven famous individuals who had dyslexia.

Most parents of toddlers don’t understand how their children learn to read; when I sat and read to my children, I took for granted that they would someday magically be able to read on their own. It wasn’t until I began teaching struggling readers that I appreciated how complex and challenging learning to read is for many students. Many of my students got stuck reading individual words, and they became frustrated with reading. These students—and many students in our schools today—benefit from direct, explicit instruction in pairing letters and letter combinations with sounds, also known as phonics. Becoming automatic in reading individual words frees up the mental energy necessary for readers to make sense of texts. And, since 87% of English words are either completely decodable or have just one exception, teaching beginning readers to decode automatically gives them a large bank of known words.

Each year, the United States celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15. This heritage month recognizes Hispanic Americans and their ancestors for their contributions to the history, culture, and achievements of our country. We at Read Naturally are honored to celebrate Hispanic Americans and their ancestors. Many Hispanic American students are multilingual learners for whom Spanish is their primary language. To meet these students’ needs, we developed Read Naturally Live—Español.  

Independent placement allows newly enrolled Read Live students to complete the placement process independently--saving teachers valuable time! Independent Placement uses speech recognition technology to analyze students' fluency as they read placement stories. Based on this data, the program assigns students an appropriate level and goal so they can begin working in Read Live as efficiently as possible. If you intend to take advantage of this amazing new feature, here are some tips:

Congratulations to Olivia, our first Star of the Month for the 2025-2026 school year! Olivia is now a fifth grader at McAuliffe Elementary School in Riverside, CA. She has made amazing progress in Read Naturally programs over the last few years.

We are very excited to announce the release of a new feature now available within Read Live: Periodic Assessment of Fluency (PAF)! PAF provides a streamlined method for teachers to measure the oral reading fluency of a student working in Read Naturally Live (RNL) using passages from outside that program a few times throughout the school year.

One Minute Reader Live is an independent reading program included with all Read Live licenses. This program is designed to motivate students while helping them develop fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. It’s an ideal way for students to master essential reading skills while working on their own.

Make Your Student a STAR!

Read Naturally Star of the Month​Share your student’s success story—nominate him or her for our Star of the Month award. Win a Barnes & Noble gift card for the student and a Read Naturally gift certificate for your class!

pointer Submit a Star-of-the-Month entry

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