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Surprisingly, just over 50% of elementary teacher preparation programs in the United States offer courses in scientifically based reading methods (Moorer, 2020). Our new Foundational Reading Skills White Paper explains the science of how students learn to read and what skills they need to be taught. Read more

An American Public Media documentary that went viral last year makes the strong argument that better phonics instruction will greatly improve our nation’s literacy statistics. According to the report, entitled, Hard Words: Why aren’t kids being taught to read?: “[A] big takeaway from decades of scientific research is that, while we use our eyes to read, the starting point for reading is sound. What a child must do to become a reader is to figure out how the words she hears and knows how to say connect to the letters on the page. Writing is a code humans invented to represent speech sounds. Kids have to crack that code to become readers.” In order to crack the code, children need to learn how letters represent speech sounds. In other words, they need to understand phonics. Read more

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. Read more

I’ve long believed that when students work in Read Naturally Live or Read Naturally Encore, we should address their phonics needs as well as improve their reading fluency. Actually, improving phonics skills is foundational to increasing fluency. Read more

Do you know a student who needs support in both fluency and phonics? If so, we encourage you to check out Read Naturally’s Phonics series. The Phonics series is a group of levels offered within Read Naturally Live and Read Naturally Encore. Students working in the Phonics levels focus on specific phonics skills while simultaneously building fluency. Read more

Quick Phonics Screener (QPS), developed by renowned literacy expert Dr. Jan Hasbrouck, is one of our most popular assessment tools. Teachers who have used QPS can attest to the fact that it is a convenient, inexpensive, and accurate way to identify individual students’ strengths and instructional needs in phonics/decoding. Once these needs are identified, teachers can make informed decisions about how to support students in their literacy development. We are pleased to announce that this handy tool is now upgraded and better than ever! Read more

Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that includes four developmental levels: word awareness, syllable awareness, onset-rime awareness, and phoneme awareness. Our Phonological Awareness Skills table shows how specific phonological awareness skills fall into the four developmental levels. The table provides an example for each skill. We hope you will download, use, and share this free resource! Read more

Do you have students who confuse one letter with another letter? For example, a student might incorrectly read big for the word pig or dig. A student can easily confuse lowercase letters like b, d, p, and q. This is because each of these letters has an overall form that is identical or very similar to another letter’s form when rotated, flipped, or reversed. Read more

Prior to becoming Read Naturally’s Educational Consultant, Karen Hunter was a reading specialist, special education teacher, and teacher trainer for 30 years in California. Karen is always brainstorming ways to teach valuable skills to students, and she has a knack for developing creative and motivating tools. This past year, our blog featured three posts by Karen, each one including a free resource she developed. Readers couldn’t download the content quickly enough. In case you missed them, we wanted to share them again. Read more

Did you know there is a downward spiral of reading failure? It starts with the foundational skills. Beginning readers who have difficulty learning to read words accurately and fluently may continue on a downward spiral, making it harder and harder to catch up. Read more