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Millions of K-12 students across the United States are English Learners (ELs). The majority of these students identify Spanish as their home language. Year after year, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Average Scores for Reading and Mathematics are significantly lower for students who are identified as ELs, in comparison to their peers who are not. It makes sense that limited English proficiency would have an impact on academic achievement where the language of instruction is English. So, what can we do to best support EL students?

Literacy researcher Dr. Jan Hasbrouck developed Quick Phonics Screener (QPS) because she needed a systematic and efficient way diagnose students’ strengths and instructional needs in phonics. QPS measures a student’s ability to recognize, decode, and pronounce all phonics elements from letter names through four-syllable words.

Dyslexia is a reading disability that affects millions of Americans. If identified early and treated with effective intervention, however, it does not need to adversely affect the lives of children with dyslexia.

Thadeus is a fifth grader at Oakridge Elementary School in Oakridge, OR who has made remarkable progress in Read Live.

Every year around this time, we like to remind teachers of the importance of checking their students’ initial Read Naturally placement. After the student completes three to six stories, you have more specific data about how they are performing in both fluency and comprehension. This is the point at which you should check initial placement to see whether adjustments to the initial level and goal are needed. 

In recognition of Dyslexia Awareness Month, Read Naturally begins a series of articles designed to build knowledge around the learning disorder of dyslexia. This first article summarizes the remarkable discovery of the language disorder over 140 years ago.

Dyslexia exists in all cultures and all languages. However, it does not impact learners in every culture in equal measure; the severity of dyslexia’s impact partially depends on the language a person is learning to read.

Dyslexia is one of the main challenges we address here at Read Naturally. For dyslexia awareness month, we want to point you toward the myriad ways in which a Read Naturally intervention can help students with this learning difference.

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.

Read Live is highly customizable to meet each student’s individual needs. Our phonics offerings within this program are no exception. Read Live makes it easy for students who need phonics support to either progress sequentially through systematic phonics instruction, or to focus specifically on the phonics pattern(s) they need to master.

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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