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Last week, I helped assemble gingerbread houses for my son’s Kindergarten class to decorate. I sat down at a table covered in empty milk cartons, graham crackers broken into various shapes, and buckets of icing. The other parent volunteers and I exchanged timid looks until the teacher met with us and showed us a fully assembled prototype. It was then that we understood what our process should be. When we saw the finished product—the goal—we could relax and get to work. Read more

You’re browsing the shelves of your favorite bookstore. Book spines of various sizes and colors flank a book whose cover is facing outward, looking you squarely in the eye. Not surprisingly, this is the book that interests you. Someone has clearly decided it’s special. Which... Read more

This time of year can find many students lacking in motivation. Thankfully, there are many simple ways to spice up your Read Live or Encore program to keep your students engaged.

One easy way to give students a motivation boost is to have them track the number of stories they complete each week. As they try to match or beat their score from the previous week, students are incentivized to put forth their best effort each day. Read more

Have you read all the books on your classroom bookshelf? If so, we’re impressed! Many busy teachers don’t have time to vet every single book available for independent reading time. Instead, you may rely on recommendations from other teachers, online reviews, or your knowledge of certain authors and publishers. Some of your most valuable book reviews, however, could come from your students themselves. Read more

Wouldn't that be wonderful! In reality, many students are impatient for your help. Fortunately, Read Naturally has a few tricks up its sleeve to keep your students engaged as they wait.

When students reach their goal on a Read Naturally story, they should read the story again, answer the comprehension questions, and continue practicing until you’re able to pass them. After completing these tasks, students should work on wait-time activities. Read more

As students work through Read Naturally stories, their progress monitoring graphs motivate them to put forth their best effort. From the beginning of the story to the end, motivation plays a key role. But this motivation shouldn't end with the story. How can you keep your students motivated to work through an entire level of stories, and the next level after that? Read more

Here at Read Naturally, we love hearing a great success story! We are always so thankful to educators who take the time to reach out to us and share their excitement and the excitement of their students. Recently, Susan Kruger, educator and author, sent us a story about her son: Read more

Common Core State Standards tell us that students need to be given challenging text. I wasn't always sure this was the case for struggling readers; however, I have found it to be very true with my students. In fact, early in the year last year, one of our fourth grade students, Nick, finished all the stories in level 5.0. He wasn’t ready to exit the program since his fluency and comprehension scores were not where we needed them to be, but we were concerned that the stories in level 5.6 would be too challenging. Read more

Over 20 years ago, when Candyce Ihnot was working toward her master’s degree in Special Education, she grappled with the question of how to keep her students motivated. She had read the research and asked the experts, but her most meaningful answer came from her daughter Claire, a competitive swimmer. “Claire, how do you stay motivated to swim all those laps?” Candyce asked one day after practice. Claire looked at her mother as though the answer was obvious. “My coach times me,” she said. Read more