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Our teacher’s manuals are packed full of useful information about how to implement our programs effectively. They’re extraordinarily well researched and include hundreds of helpful suggestions. Have you read them recently? Cover to cover?

Don’t worry if the answer is no. We know how busy teachers are, and we want to make it easy on you to implement our programs with fidelity. That’s why we’ve created Fidelity Checklists. Download as many as you’d like—they’re free on our website! Read more

Phonics skills are foundational to reading fluently and with comprehension. It's essential for reading teachers to determine which students need phonics support and what that support should look like. Read Naturally is here to support your students’ phonics needs every step of the way—from assessment, to intervention, to ongoing skill maintenance. Read more

The renewed enthusiasm over the past few years for phonics instruction has been heartening. I have believed in, and therefore taught, phonics skills since the beginning of my teaching career in 1970. (In fact, I am the proud owner of a well-worn 1967 edition of A Guide to Teaching Phonics, by June Orton.) Phonemic awareness and basic phonics skills are essential foundations on which students build toward the ultimate goal of reading: comprehension. So, through the phonics wars and beyond I continued to teach phonics to my students (and I still do today). 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

A new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics shows that students with dyslexia are underperforming their peers at an earlier age than previously thought. The study asserts that the achievement gap between typical readers and students with dyslexia is evident as early as first grade. 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

This month, we’d like to highlight what makes our Read Naturally GATE (Group and Tutoring Edition) program so successful. Instead of telling you ourselves, we decided to ask an expert out in the field. Read more

Are you looking for high-quality, research-based reading curricula at an affordable price… or even for free? Chances are, Read Naturally offers just what you need. Our highly effective tools target all aspects of reading development. Educator favorites include: Read more

Most fluent readers don’t question the seemingly unnecessary b in doubt. They know it’s there, and they know how to read and spell the word. But in the interest of expanding students’ vocabularies and developing their spelling skills, it can be beneficial to teach that the b actually does serve a purpose. Read more

When it comes to language, young children have a distinct advantage over the rest of the population. Their brains are far more receptive to it. Researchers believe that people are most able to easily learn their native language—as well as other languages—in the time before adolescence. How can educators support this window? Read more