RN Bookmark

With roughly a month of school under your belt, you’re likely aware now of which students qualify for a reading intervention. You may soon find yourself with a group of students who are brand new to Read Naturally. This is an important moment. Communicating your expectations clearly will set the stage for success. Read more

Read Naturally programs are inherently motivating. Students know how well they are performing based on their goals and progress monitoring graphs. The desire to see these goals and graphs improve is enough to motivate most students to put forth their best effort. Still, a little external recognition doesn’t hurt. Read more

If there’s one thing all teachers seem to agree on, it’s the fact that reading aloud to students is highly beneficial. Indeed, one of our most popular blog posts to date was about the magic of reading aloud to your class. This practice boosts literacy and builds community, and it is often a joyful experience for teachers and students alike. National Read Aloud Month is coming up in March, and we encourage you to start planning now for the ways you will participate. 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

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

What does active engagement really look like? A student might appear focused on a task—especially a task that involves a screen—but the kind of engagement that leads to deep learning might still be lacking. At Read Naturally, we have a special interest in student engagement. We know that active engagement is crucial to progress in reading. Therefore, we have designed all elements of our curricula to foster sustained student engagement. Read more

Plenty of research confirms that schools with positive climates, in which the students have strong social-emotional skills, are ideal learning environments. Teachers and parents don’t need research to believe this—it’s common sense that when people are shown kindness as opposed to hostility, they’re far more apt to succeed in school and beyond. Read more

A large, nationally representative survey recently conducted by Scholastic found that 94% of preK through Grade 12 teachers and principals believe students should have time for independent reading. Most teachers believe that, when students are given the time to read and enjoy books of their choice, engagement increases and a greater love of reading is fostered. However, just 36% of teachers say they actually set aside this time every day. In classrooms where independent reading does occur, students read for an average of 22 minutes. Read more

As students learn to read more fluently, many develop a passion for writing. Stories are inspiring and life-changing for students of all ages—and at some point, many of them wonder, “Could I do that, too? Could I write something that other people will enjoy?” Read more