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Most parents of toddlers don’t understand how their children learn to read; when I sat and read to my children, I took for granted that they would someday magically be able to read on their own. It wasn’t until I began teaching struggling readers that I appreciated how complex and challenging learning to read is for many students. Many of my students got stuck reading individual words, and they became frustrated with reading. These students—and many students in our schools today—benefit from direct, explicit instruction in pairing letters and letter combinations with sounds, also known as phonics. Becoming automatic in reading individual words frees up the mental energy necessary for readers to make sense of texts. And, since 87% of English words are either completely decodable or have just one exception, teaching beginning readers to decode automatically gives them a large bank of known words.

Ready or not, school is starting soon. For many teachers, that means you’re just getting used to waking up later, feeling rested, and hopefully enjoying some travel. But in the back of your mind you’re also thinking about your classroom, your students, and your lesson plans.

​​​​​​​With a name like Read Naturally, it might seem obvious that we care about reading and books. This passion extends to supporting students all over the world, including students in Africa, where 40% of school-age children do not attend school. Read Naturally recently shipped a truckload of books to Books for Africa, an organization near the Read Naturally home office in St. Paul, MN.

Read Naturally GATE+ aligns with all of the IES recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills in the early grades.

You know that Read Naturally programs work. Maybe you’ve talked to other teachers in your building or tried our free trial, or maybe you’ve even used our programs with your students in the past. Here’s the challenge—how do you pay for them?

In our ongoing commitment to inclusivity and accessibility, we are thrilled to announce some exciting updates to the Read Live platform. Read Naturally recently received a letter of conformance stating that the Read Live platform now conforms with Level A and AA of the WCAG version 2.1.

Since 1967, International Children's Book Day has been celebrated on or around Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday on April 2. Here are some ways to celebrate.

March is National Reading Month, a time to celebrate reading. As a literacy company, reading celebrations are our favorite! In honor of National Reading Month, we polled the Read Naturally staff to find out why they love reading. We hope their responses will inspire you and your students to spend some time enjoying a good book together!  

​​​​​​​Do your students use Word Warm-ups Live to improve their phonics skills? If so, you may have noticed some changes in the program’s appearance and functionality. Here are the exciting updates we’ve recently made to Word Warm-ups Live, our phonics intervention accessible to any student with a Read Live license. 

“Why do you have a level 5.6…What happened to level 5.5?” This question comes into our customer service department fairly frequently, though there’s no official tally. I have actually wondered about this myself! Here is the history on Level 5.6, from one of our original writers:  

Make Your Student a STAR!

Read Naturally Star of the Month​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!

pointer Submit a Star-of-the-Month entry

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