Ariana M. is setting her goals high and tearing them down. Ariana is an eighth-grader at Lincoln School in Brookline, MA and, Read Naturally's January Star of the Month. Ariana was selected for her daily efforts in Read Naturally and substantial gains. Ariana is highly motivated, constantly asking to move up levels. See what her teacher Lisa Ziegler-Chamblee shared this with us about Ariana and her success.

Ariana has struggled with reading since she was young and has received specialized decoding instruction. While she knows the syllable types, she has struggled to generalize her decoding skills when reading a variety of texts. With Read Naturally, she has persevered and worked extremely hard. In our hybrid model, Ariana works hard to practice high frequency words through multi-sensory learning. She also incorporates challenge words from each passage, such as "implementing" from the Henry Ford passage. She reads with her teacher each in person day of school and each remote day, practicing five days a week.  In the past 45 days of school - one and a half months - Ariana has jumped two levels of Read Naturally, from 4.5 to 5.6. She elects to move up once she is feeling confident with her having passed several stories with decreasing struggle. Her word-per-minute cold timing has gone from 90 cwpm to 130 cwpm and her hot timing has improved from 121 to 150. Meanwhile, her comprehension remains solid. While she may not get every question correct on the first try, she can always get most of them right. She is an intelligent, determined and diligent young woman.  Read Naturally is helping her make key gains in her reading.

The Read Naturally Star Student of the Month program is designed to celebrate students who work hard to improve their reading skills using Read Naturally's intervention programs. Each month, we select one student to feature in our newsletter. The selected student wins a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card, and the school or teacher who nominated the student receives a $200 gift certificate for Read Naturally materials.