Are your Read Naturally students working in the correct level? And do they have an appropriate goal? Every year around this time, we like to remind teachers of the importance of checking their students’ initial Read Naturally placement. A Read Naturally student will make optimal progress in the program when he or she works in the appropriate level of reading material and has an appropriate words-correct-per-minute goal. Our detailed checking initial placement process will help you verify whether the level and goal you initially set for the student is the right fit or whether you need to make adjustments. 

It is time to check initial placement when a student has completed three to six stories. A student's data must accurately reflect performance, so check initial placement only if you or another trained adult guided the student during cold timings. If the student conducted his or her cold timings independently, guide the student during cold timings for the next three stories, and then check initial placement using the data for those three stories.

Please use these free, detailed guides to check initial placement:

READ LIVE USERS:

Print out this guide and the Students-at-a-Glance report, and follow the instructions in the guide to interpret the data. 

ENCORE USERS:

Print out this guide, and use it in conjunction with your students’ progress graphs.

Checking initial placement is required to ensure your students’ success in Read Naturally. If you have questions about this process or need help finding the right level or goal for a student, please get in touch. Our goal is for all Read Naturally students to be placed correctly so that they may become fluent readers as efficiently as possible. 

  • Click here to download the free Checking Initial Placement guide for Read Live.
  • Click here to download the free Checking Initial Placement guide for Encore.