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Our culture celebrates an abundance of choices. When the stakes are low, we can simply decide that these choices are not worth agonizing over. But what happens when the stakes are high? What happens when you’re sitting across from a struggling reader and you don’t know the best way to help him? Thousands of programs claim to “work,” but many don’t—and making the wrong choice could waste the precious little time this struggling reader has to catch up. Help!! Read more

It’s almost winter break! Are you counting down the days? Your students probably are! Their plans may include quintessential winter break activities like building snow forts (climate permitting), sipping hot chocolate, and having plenty of good old-fashioned fun. Before you release them to their holiday mischief, it’s always a good idea to remind them to incorporate plenty of reading into their plans. Read more

We tip our hats to Cheyenne H. for being named Read Naturally's Star of the Month for November 2016. Cheyenne is a third-grade student at Lohn Elementary School in Lohn, TX. Cheyenne was nominated by her teacher, Ms. JoAnn Garcia, for her accomplishments and growth in reading as proven by Cheyenne's recent success at the U.I.H Ready Writing competition. Ms. Garcia shared the following about Cheyenne's accomplishments: Read more

For the first time in 25 years, Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot has moved her reading lab to a new school. In a series of blog posts, Candyce will share “stories from the lab,” in which she describes the successes, challenges, and surprises of operating Read Naturally Live in a new setting. She’ll sprinkle each post with bits of wisdom from decades of creating Read Naturally materials and using them with the beloved students she keeps at the center of her work. In this post, Candyce solves an important mystery that emerged in the lab after checking her students' initial placement. Read more

For the first time in 25 years, Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot has moved her reading lab to a new school. In a series of blog posts, Candyce will share “stories from the lab,” in which she describes the successes, challenges, and surprises of operating Read Naturally Live in a new setting. She’ll sprinkle each post with bits of wisdom from decades of creating Read Naturally materials and using them with the beloved students she keeps at the center of her work. In this post, Candyce shares a story that highlights the importance of checking initial placement to ensure a student is working in the correct level. Read more

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

Congratulations Brayden D. on being named Read Naturally's October Star of the Month. Brayden is a second grade student at C.W. Shipley Elementary School in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Read more

For the first time in 25 years, Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot has moved her reading lab to a new school. In a series of blog posts, Candyce will share “stories from the lab,” in which she describes the successes, challenges, and surprises of operating Read Naturally Live in a new setting. She’ll sprinkle each post with bits of wisdom from decades of creating Read Naturally materials and using them with the beloved students she keeps at the center of her work.

In this post, Candyce describes setting up for the first day, training the students, and finally seeing that first bit of magic when they start making progress. Read more