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Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot is blogging again! Last year, after starting a Read Live reading lab in a new school, Candyce wrote a series of blog posts about her experiences. Teachers couldn’t get enough of her helpful tips & tricks, endless wisdom, and relatable stories. Due to popular demand, she is back again this year to share even more Stories From the Lab. In this post, she describes the many benefits of inviting parents and teachers into the reading lab. Read more

Children around the country will be asked the same question several times this week: What are you thankful for? While some children will take the time to pause and give a thoughtful answer, many will just answer the question quickly (“I’m thankful for my family and friends”) without taking the time to consider the meaning of what they’re saying. In fact, many adults will do the same thing. Read more

Read Naturally's October Star of the Month is Danielle E. from Durham, NH. Danielle is a sophomore student at Oyster River High School, where she works with her teacher, Ms. Jennifer McGuinness, in Read Live. Read more

Progress monitoring is a key reason why the Read Naturally Strategy is so successful. When students can easily monitor their own progress, they’re motivated to stay focused on the task at hand in order to continue improving. But the self-monitoring of progress by students is only half of the progress-monitoring story in any Read Naturally classroom. Read Naturally teachers must also monitor their students’ progress in order to make the necessary adjustments to help accelerate growth. For this reason, Read Naturally programs include detailed reports and graphs that make tracking growth a breeze for teachers. Read more

To determine if a student is a good candidate for a reading intervention like Read Naturally, teachers will rely on the data from benchmark assessment. Clear, well-organized assessment data allows teachers to make these important decisions efficiently and accurately. Teachers love our web-based benchmark assessment program, Benchmark Assessor Live, because it is easy to administer and it presents straightforward, automatically generated, and detailed reports. Read more

If you work with beginning or developing readers, chances are you’ve encountered a student who has difficulty identifying certain lowercase letters. While uppercase letters are more easily distinguished, lowercase letters like b, d, p, and q—which look very similar—tend to cause confusion. Read more

There are certain kids who want to do everything fast. Do you know any? Their inclination to race through the world seems built into their DNA, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. These kids are often eager to raise their hands, respond to problems, and try new things (not to mention excel in sports like Track & Field). But, as you know, these kids often need to be taught to slow down in their schoolwork. Putting forth their best effort is more important than being the first to finish. Read more