RN Bookmark

We’ve reached the time of year when many of you are filling up your summer calendars, making plans to keep your children’s minds and bodies busy. Quiet time to read might not earn a spot on your family calendar, but it should be highly prioritized nonetheless.

Here are some tips for boosting your children’s literacy this summer: Read more

​​​​​​​If you’re a Read Live user, we hope you’re taking advantage of FREE One Minute Reader Live access this summer to accelerate your students’ gains and ensure they don’t lose the progress they’ve made this year. OMR Live is completely independent and ideally suited for summer learning. Teachers typically have just one concern: How can we trust that the students will put in the time and effort on their own? Rest assured, OMR Live is inherently rewarding, and kids love it! Beyond this, consider boosting their motivation by implementing a fun incentive program. Read more

​In my last post, I shared the many assessment mistakes I’ve made over the years. Blunders aside, I actually love spring assessments for one simple reason. The spring assessment gives me an opportunity to show my students the big picture and remind them that the best reward of all is taking ownership of their own progress. This is usually just a short conversation, but it’s one of the most important talks I will have with them. Read more

​Is it really assessment season again? It feels like yesterday that I opened the lab at this new school, met my students, and screened them for reading difficulties using benchmark assessment. The winter assessment window seemed to arrive just a short time after that. And now it’s springtime already, and spring assessment window is almost here. It is time to prepare to assess the students yet again. Read more

In order to know whether a student has made enough progress to exit a Read Naturally program, you need to assess the student with grade-level material. It is important to celebrate your student’s daily growth from cold to hot timings in a story, the student’s goal being increased and the student moving up a level. It is also exciting to see a student’s cold-timing scores increase from story to story. These are all indications that the student’s reading skills are improving and that he or she is making progress in the program. But it is essential to keep the long-term goal in mind. Read more

​​​​​​​Congrats to our April Star of the Month, Katie, who has made great progress in reading this year! Katie is a fifth grader at Brookside Elementary in Nicholasville, KY. Here is what Katie's teacher, Ms. Schulz, had to say about her: Read more

As a mother of four young children who are drawn to the iPad like moths to a flame, it’s a little hard for me to write a blog post about the upside of screen time. Mostly I see the iPad as a frequent source of conflict in my house. My kids want to play games or watch shows on it, and I want them to do things I’ve deemed more meaningful—read books, play outside, build with Legos, or, dare I even dream it, pick up their room. Indeed, plenty of research confirms the negative consequences of too much screen time, which is why so many parents find themselves fighting this battle with their children day after day. Read more

What is the best way to ensure your Read Live students don't lose the progress they made in reading this year? Have them work in One Minute Reader Live over the summer! In school, the majority of Read Live students are working in Read Naturally Live. All of these students also have free access to One Minute Reader Live—an effective and fun summer reading tool. Read more

Innovations and developments over more than three decades have continuously enhanced the quality of the tools Read Naturally offers for teachers and students. In addition, Read Naturally remains dedicated to doing right by teachers and students. Our founder, Candyce Ihnot, still works tirelessly along with the rest of the Read Naturally team to strengthen its reading instruction tools and training. Read more

Back when Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot would present at full-day seminars, she would often start by telling a story about her youngest child, Tommy. One day, Tommy came home from elementary school and angrily declared, “I hate school.” Tommy was the son of two schoolteachers—his declaration was basically blasphemous! When Candyce asked him to explain why he hated school, his lip started to quiver. He told his mom about independent reading time. “She doesn’t even know,” he said of his teacher, “I can’t read.” Read more