March is National Reading Awareness Month, and ReadAloud.org is asking families everywhere to commit to reading aloud with their children for at least 15 minutes each day for 21 straight days. The goal of this 21-Day Challenge is to make reading aloud a universal habit. Direct parents/guardians to sign up for the challenge anytime this month. Free downloads, including bookmarks, trackers, calendars, posters, certificates and more help make the challenge exciting for students and parents alike.
Read more The other day, my son asked me why blizzards are hazardous. The most interesting part of his question was the way he said the word hazardous. He pronounced it incorrectly, with a long a: HAYzardous. This told me he’d never heard the word spoken aloud before. However, when I probed him on the word’s meaning, he knew it exactly. How?
Read more We are pleased to report that the Closing the Gap organization recently featured Read Naturally on its Front Page Report, which highlights the products and developments that are influential in the area of assistive technology. Assistive technology is any product or tool that helps people with disabilities in the tasks they set out to accomplish. Closing the Gap is internationally renowned as the leader in assistive technology news, resources, and professional development.
Read more The fact that so many students love working in Read Naturally programs brings us great joy. But we are most delighted when students no longer need our programs. The whole point of a Read Naturally intervention is to one day exit the program as a fluent and confident reader. The sooner this day comes for a student, the better!
Read more Tip your hat to Wim C. for he is our January Star of the Month. Wim is a fifth grade student at Camperdown Academy in Greenville, SC.
Read more Read Naturally is pleased to announce the 2019 Read Live School of the Year Award to recognize schools whose students have substantially improved their reading skills using the Read Live program.
Read more Valentine’s Day, a holiday about love, seems to instead fill a large portion of the population with dread. If romance isn’t your thing, you feel doomed. If you’re unpartnered, you feel left out. If you’re a teacher, you’re bracing yourself for a day of mayhem and over-sugared students. And if you’re a parent of school-aged children, your living space is suddenly littered with dozens of valentines your children need to address. Does anyone actually love this holiday?
Read more Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot likes to tell the story of a little boy who went from struggling to fluent using the Read Naturally program. When Candyce asked the boy how he got to be such a good reader, he said with a smirk, “It was nothing you did.” Rather than be offended by his brutal honesty, Candyce was delighted. The boy was taking due credit for his own accomplishment. He had come to understand that he’d possessed the tools for success all along. Having found the confidence and fortitude to master a huge challenge, he could now draw on those qualities again and again—without his teacher’s help.
Read more Nothing motivates a struggling reader more than experiencing his or her own success. That’s why Read Naturally programs incorporate goals and progress monitoring graphs to show students continuous proof of their improvement. Students are even more motivated when teachers and parents help celebrate this success. If you’re looking for ways to show your Read Naturally students how awesome they are, here are some ideas:
Read more Although the default settings in Read Live tend to work well for most students, the program is highly customizable. Teachers who adjust the program settings to suit the diverse needs of their students often find that a slight tweak is all it takes to help a struggling student soar. How can teachers change the default settings? And when are such changes indicated?
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