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Everywhere you go these days, it seems that educators are talking about personalized learning. Defined loosely, “personalized learning” is instruction that is tailored to meet an individual student’s needs. The instruction is usually delivered via technology that can adapt to each student. Educators often ask us if our web-based reading intervention program, Read Naturally Live, is considered a personalized learning tool. Our answer is that it’s “personalized learning with a twist.” Read more

What are the characteristics of a successful school? Educators everywhere have asked this question in hopes that the answers might help create an optimal learning environment for students. Over the past 14 years, the Office of the Superintendent for Public Instruction (OSPI) has done extensive research into this question as well. The studies conducted there led to a list of nine characteristics that were found most often in high-performing schools. Read on for a summary of the nine characteristics, as well as the many ways in which Read Naturally programs can help your school develop them. Read more

Today, thanks to the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, more and more teachers are designing and sharing curricula. The digital revolution has given teachers better equipment to create materials, and it’s now easier than ever for teachers to share these materials with others. What’s more, many of these materials are available for free. To many teachers, the OER movement seems too good to be true—and then, inevitably, they wonder: Is there a downside? Read more

How can we help those students who have not attended preschool and/or do not possess the same school-readiness skills as their peers? Read more

Flip on the 2016 Summer Olympics, and you’ll quickly see that today’s athletes are the best of all time. Records are being shattered left and right. The best sprint times of Jesse Owens, once considered the fastest runner in the world, wouldn’t even earn him a medal today. And if you really want to be blown away, compare the Olympic women gymnasts of 1936 to the “Final Five” who captured the gold in Rio. To say there’s no comparison would be an understatement. Read more

In elementary school, I remember participating in a reading incentive program with a simple premise: The more books I read, the more points I’d receive toward a reward. Because of the reward, my classmates and I were highly motivated to spend our free time reading. What’s not to love about a program like that?

There was just one problem. I could read a long, challenging chapter book slightly above my reading level in the same amount of time it took my classmate to read a dozen quick, easy books below his reading level. Who earned more points? My classmate. What did I learn? Quantity beats quality. Don’t challenge yourself.

The program had a fantastic mission, but there was an unintended consequence for me and many other students. Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens often in schools. The only way to avoid it is for teachers to take the time to scrutinize the practices and programs they put to use in their classrooms. Are we doing things out of habit or because others are doing them? Or are we doing things because they truly promote learning? A good educator is one who observes and adjusts—constantly and relentlessly. Read more

Children are masters at reading our expectations of them. What we communicate with our body language, mood, and tone of voice while interacting with them often speaks louder than the actual words we say. And when we have expectations, guess what? For better or worse, the children live into them. Read more

Learning to decode words is a difficult skill in its own right. ELL students have the added challenge of learning this skill in a nonnative language. It goes without saying that these students need lots of extra support. What should this support look like? Read more

Why are video games addicting? Neuroscience answers it with complicated data on neuron pathways and dopamine. Ask a child, and his answer will be much simpler: Because they’re fun! Read more

“While we may ultimately teach students enough test-taking strategies to eke out a passing score and earn that high school diploma, we are missing a crucial opportunity to show our students that they, too, can be real readers.” Read more