We are pleased to feature Karen Hunter as a guest blogger today on RN Bookmark. Before becoming Read Naturally’s Director of Curriculum & Professional Development in 2007, Karen was a reading specialist, special education teacher, and teacher trainer for 30 years in California. There she developed a passion for teaching the crucial and often difficult skill of spelling to struggling students. Bringing her expertise to Read Naturally, Karen was instrumental in the development and management of our spelling product, Signs for Sounds. In this post, Karen shares information on the importance of teaching spelling. She includes resources that will help you evaluate your current spelling curriculum or a new program you might be considering.
Read more We always love hearing from Read Naturally customers, and we especially love hearing about your students’ successes! Sherrie G. from Houston, TX, recently shared how she successfully helped her granddaughter learn to read using Read Naturally Masters Edition and the video chat program Skype.
Read more If your students have been using Read Naturally since the beginning of the year, they should now have a pretty good handle on using the program. You should be able to spend your time monitoring their progress and differentiating instruction instead of reminding them what they need to be doing. In addition to checking their hot and cold timings to look at their progress (and making any necessary adjustments), you should be checking how each student is doing on the comprehension questions. Is the student getting at least 80% of the questions correct? Do you have some students who are consistently getting certain questions wrong?
Read more Ginger Rogers is one of our dynamic and inspirational presenters. She received her master’s degree in education from Texas A&M University and has worked as both a teacher and an instructional coach. She has also served as a mentor to undergraduate pre-service teachers and has published articles on reading assessment and reading fluency. For the past three years, Ginger has taught summer school at the Holy Cross Anglican School (HCAS) in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize. She shares some of her experiences with you, our readers, below.
Read more