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The second year of my Read Live lab at the new school continues to go smoothly, and I am grateful to have drawn from last year’s stories to improve my process this year. Of course, just as things were starting to feel easy breezy, we hit an unexpected bump. Read more

In my previous blog post , I explained my process for helping students answer questions #3 and #6, the vocabulary questions, correctly in Read Live. Part of my process involved motivating the students to do their best work, which I explained in detail in my previous post. In this post, I’ll delve into the details of how I set up and presented the lesson demonstrating how to answer questions #3 and #6 successfully. Read more

At this point in the school year, most of your Read Naturally students are comfortable with the Read Naturally Strategy and able to work mostly independently. You worked hard to properly train them and to place them in the program, and your hard work is paying off as they’re becoming better readers. However, your involvement at this stage in the process is just as important as it was in the beginning. Now, you must turn your attention to keeping your students challenged. Read more

It’s that time of year again! The recommended winter benchmark assessment window is December 16 – February 6, which means many of you have already completed assessments and many of you will do so in the coming weeks. Here are some helpful resources to utilize as you analyze your students’ data. Read more

In many districts and schools, a Read Live Account Administrator works behind the scenes to ensure the program runs smoothly for teachers and students. Who are these helpers, and what tasks are they responsible for? In order to have a thorough understanding of how the Read Live program functions, all Read Live users should be familiar with the Account Administrator’s important role. Read more

Many students are feeling a lot of momentum this time of year as they’ve become more competent in reading and are advancing through Read Naturally stories and levels more quickly. Be sure to capitalize on their motivation and help them sustain it over winter break. Here are some at-home tools that can help keep your students excited about reading. Read more

Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot is blogging again! Last year, after starting a Read Live reading lab in a new school, Candyce wrote a series of blog posts about her experiences. Teachers couldn’t get enough of her helpful tips & tricks, endless wisdom, and relatable stories. Due to popular demand, she is back again this year to share even more Stories From the Lab. In this post, she describes the many benefits of inviting parents and teachers into the reading lab. Read more

Progress monitoring is a key reason why the Read Naturally Strategy is so successful. When students can easily monitor their own progress, they’re motivated to stay focused on the task at hand in order to continue improving. But the self-monitoring of progress by students is only half of the progress-monitoring story in any Read Naturally classroom. Read Naturally teachers must also monitor their students’ progress in order to make the necessary adjustments to help accelerate growth. For this reason, Read Naturally programs include detailed reports and graphs that make tracking growth a breeze for teachers. Read more

If you work with beginning or developing readers, chances are you’ve encountered a student who has difficulty identifying certain lowercase letters. While uppercase letters are more easily distinguished, lowercase letters like b, d, p, and q—which look very similar—tend to cause confusion. Read more

There are certain kids who want to do everything fast. Do you know any? Their inclination to race through the world seems built into their DNA, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. These kids are often eager to raise their hands, respond to problems, and try new things (not to mention excel in sports like Track & Field). But, as you know, these kids often need to be taught to slow down in their schoolwork. Putting forth their best effort is more important than being the first to finish. Read more