Picture a struggling reader in your mind. What age is the student? When many people think about struggling readers, they don’t picture teenagers or adults. And yet many middle-school, high-school, and adult learners struggle with reading. To help them achieve literacy, an effective intervention is crucial. Unfortunately, many reading interventions are geared toward younger students. 

The educators on the Read Naturally team have been aware of this problem since well before the company began in 1991. From the beginning, we have ensured that our programs feature high-interest, nonfiction content. The primary reason for this is so that a Read Naturally intervention can work for a learner of any age. The fictional “See Jack run” text that is common in early reading material feels patronizing to older students—and this feeling can impede progress. Conversely, Read Naturally’s nonfiction stories, which are sprinkled with interesting facts that most adults don’t know, appeal to students of any age. 

Nonfiction content offers another benefit as well. As students learn to read better through supported practice, they simultaneously get to experience what it’s like to be successful in reading to learn. 

In addition to engaging content, older students need a solution that treats them with respect, shows them their effort is paying off, and adapts to their individual needs. 

Materials that don’t draw unwanted attention. Read Live has a clean, age-appropriate interface that looks very consistent regardless of the program, series, or level students are working in. That way, students who might be self-conscious about being behind don’t have to worry about standing out. The same goes for our other solutions—the reproducibles for Encore II, Comprehension Builder, Take Aim! at Vocabulary, et cetera, use clean, straightforward design. 

Proof of Progress (POP!). Many older students have struggled for so long that it’s hard for them to trust that more effort will lead to meaningful results. With Read Naturally solutions, students get to see the POP right away as their scores improve from the cold timing to their practice readings to the hot timing, whether they’re reading word lists for phonics or stories for fluency. For comprehension, they can go back and correct missed questions, and they can see their improvement on specific question types over time. As students see their progress, they start to see themselves as readers. 

Flexibility to meet individual needs. Over time, students’ needs naturally diverge, so solutions need to be easy to differentiate based on each student’s needs and readiness. That helps students make the most efficient progress possible, which matters because many of them have a big gap to close and need to close it quickly. Our solutions are highly customizable, so you can have students working at different levels and on different skills at the same time. Even our teacher-led solutions offer many ways to differentiate within a single group, along with guidance for adjusting expectations to keep students challenged as they grow. 

If you know an older student in need of a high-quality reading intervention, we would love to support you. Read Naturally solutions are used with older readers in a variety of settings, including in some prison systems to help adult inmates achieve literacy. Literacy is one of the most important tools a person can possess—and all learners, no matter what age, should be given the opportunity to acquire it. 

Take a look at our list of solutions to see if one might be a fit for your older student. Note the “skill level” listed for each program. This range, e.g., grades 1–8, indicates that the content is delivered at first- through eighth-grade reading levels. This means that any person reading below an eighth-grade level can benefit from the program.  

If you are using Read Naturally solutions with older students, you may want to make some adaptations to make the program feel even more age appropriate. The following recommendations are for students working in Read Live or Encore II: 

  • Reduce the number of read alongs for older students . 
  • If the student is working in level 5.6 or above, require a one-minute timing for the Cold and Hot Timing steps but a two-minute or whole-story timing for the Practice step. 
  • You may require an older student to write the retelling of the story as a summary with a main idea statement and three supporting details. At first, the main idea statement could be copied from the answer to question 1. 
  • Make use of glossaries, crossword puzzles, and Wordtastic (Read Naturally Live only) to focus on vocabulary development. 
  • Students working in Encore II may mark their progress monitoring graph with a line rather than coloring it in. 

We are currently offering a free 60-day trial* of our most popular solution, Read Live. Click here to sign up so that you and your students can start seeing the POP (proof of progress) right away! If you have additional questions about using Read Naturally solutions with older age groups, don’t hesitate to get in touch. 

*Sign up for the 30-day trial, then complete your personalized training session to unlock 30 additional days.