We're excited to announce that Morgan G. from Illinois is this school year's first Read Naturally Star of the Month. With the help of her reading teacher, Melissa Grant from Big Hallow Elementary in Lindenhurst, IL, Morgan worked hard all summer long on her reading. This hard work helped prepare her to start fifth grade at a new school: Johnsburg Elementary in Johnsburg, IL. Ms. Grant nominated Morgan for her consistent success and hard work over the past year, which led to outstanding improvement in all areas of reading. Here is what Ms. Grant shared with us about Morgan's success in Read Naturally. 

"I began working with Morgan in the fall of 4th grade. In 3rd grade she had been receiving Title 1 services, and this past school year she was receiving Response to Intervention Tier 3 services in reading. In the fall her Measures of Academic Performance reading RIT score was 177, and by winter her reading RIT score had improved to 196 and she was in the 31st percentile. From September to January, she had already made a year's worth of growth using Read Naturally! Last fall, when given a CBM oral reading fluency passage for 4th grade she could only read 36 words per minute. Before leaving school she was reading close to 80 words per minute when given a 4th grade oral reading fluency passage. Morgan's reading had improved so much that she doubled her fluency while reading a 4th-grade passage. I tutored Morgan over the summer and she was working on Read Naturally level 3.5. Read Naturally helped Morgan improve her comprehension and her ability to write retells and then summaries. Her accuracy on the comprehension questions was always 80-100%. She also improved her ability to decode words using Read Naturally's Word Warm Ups level 1. Using both Read Naturally interventions was awesome for Morgan and she made a lot of growth. She is my reading star." 

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.

To nominate your deserving student, visit the entry form.