Whenever I’m grappling with a difficult question, I remember the wise words of my favorite teacher. “Maybe this is not an either/or situation,” she once told me. “Maybe it’s a both, and.” In a world that often urges us to take sides and to feel only one way about something, it can be helpful to remember that a productive way forward frequently lies somewhere in the both, and. This wisdom can be applied to many situations, including… yes… effective reading intervention.
Read more At Read Naturally, we believe all educators should have access to free, high-quality training in our programs—and in reading instruction in general. This is why we offer several free webinars every year, covering a range of topics from fluency research to specific program tips. Educators are invited to be live participants at these webinars as they occur; otherwise, recordings can be accessed anytime in the Knowledgebase section of our website.
Read more Have the students in your school experienced great success using Read Naturally Live this year? If so, now is your chance to win up to $2,000 for your school! The 2020 Read Live School of the Year Award recognizes schools whose students have substantially improved their reading skills using the Read Live program this year. Enter your school today! We are accepting submissions now through April 19.
Read more To advance literacy worldwide over the next decade, what topics do educators need to focus on? The International Literacy Association (ILA) recently put this question out to 1,443 literacy professionals from 65 countries and territories in the 2020 What’s Hot in Literacy survey. With the ultimate goal of better outcomes for students, this reputable report highlights the most critical topics in literacy and identifies areas that need more support.
Read more This winter, we’re traveling to reading and education conferences in all parts of the nation with one goal in mind: meeting you! Chances are high we’ll be coming to a city near you very soon. Check our schedule here to find out.
Read more Winter break is a couple days away. It’s almost time to celebrate! Before you release your students to make mischief, merriment and hopefully lots of hot chocolate, we urge you to ask them just one question: “Who will read with you over break?”
Read more Research tells us that in order to become fluent, students need to learn to decode unknown words accurately and automatically. An understanding of phonics is what makes this possible. Earlier this year, we explained how our QPS diagnostic phonics assessment can quickly and easily alert you to students who need additional phonics support. Last month, we highlighted our popular GATE for phonics program, which is an ideal phonics intervention for small groups of early readers. But what if you’re looking for a phonics intervention that students of all ages can use mostly independently?
Read more Thanksgiving is a day to reflect on what we’re grateful for. Full bellies and full hearts leave people everywhere feeling thankful for what they have—and wanting for nothing more. So naturally, the day after Thanksgiving is a time to… make a wish list and go shopping? Have you ever noticed that the rapid progression from Thanksgiving to Black Friday to Christmas can quickly take many of us from grateful to greedy?
Read more When Candyce Ihnot developed the Read Naturally Strategy back in 1989, her students were the only ones using it. It might have stayed this way, had it not been for the dedicated teachers who saw promise in Candyce’s results and decided to give the strategy a try with their own students. Pleased with how well it worked, these teachers spread the word to other teachers. This is how, eventually, the Read Naturally Strategy came to help millions of struggling students read fluently.
Read more An American Public Media documentary that went viral last year makes the strong argument that better phonics instruction will greatly improve our nation’s literacy statistics. According to the report, entitled, Hard Words: Why aren’t kids being taught to read?: “[A] big takeaway from decades of scientific research is that, while we use our eyes to read, the starting point for reading is sound. What a child must do to become a reader is to figure out how the words she hears and knows how to say connect to the letters on the page. Writing is a code humans invented to represent speech sounds. Kids have to crack that code to become readers.” In order to crack the code, children need to learn how letters represent speech sounds. In other words, they need to understand phonics.
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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!
