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Since 1967, International Children's Book Day has been celebrated on or around Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday on April 2. Here are some ways to celebrate. Read more

You know that Read Naturally programs work. Maybe you’ve talked to other teachers in your building or tried our free trial, or maybe you’ve even used our programs with your students in the past. Here’s the challenge—how do you pay for them? Read more

In my fourth-grade classroom, I sometimes felt like a circus ringmaster, trying to manage multiple groups of students at different ability levels while making sure that all 24 students were engaged in a productive activity. Anyone who has stepped inside a classroom has seen the evidence of... Read more

Every year since 1987, March has been designated by presidential proclamation as Women’s History Month. This annual celebration of women’s contributions to American history began as Women’s History Week in 1978, and today countries like Canada and Australia also honor women and... Read more

March is National Reading Month, a time to celebrate reading. As a literacy company, reading celebrations are our favorite! In honor of National Reading Month, we polled the Read Naturally staff to find out why they love reading. We hope their responses will inspire you and your students to spend some time enjoying a good book together!   Read more

“Why do you have a level 5.6…What happened to level 5.5?” This question comes into our customer service department fairly frequently, though there’s no official tally. I have actually wondered about this myself! Here is the history on Level 5.6, from one of our original writers:   Read more

Read Naturally GATE+ aligns with all of the IES recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills in the early grades. Read more

February is Black History Month, a celebration of the achievements of Black Americans. It began as Negro History Week in 1926, when Carter G. Woodson, a Black historian, was instrumental in founding an organization that promoted the achievements of Black Americans. A week of celebrations, performances, and lectures grew into a monthlong opportunity to honor famous Black Americans and their contributions to American society.   Read more

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. Read more

Ready or not, school is starting soon. For many teachers, that means you’re just getting used to waking up later, feeling rested, and hopefully enjoying some travel. But in the back of your mind you’re also thinking about your classroom, your students, and your lesson plans. Read more