RN Bookmark

Back to All Posts

Read Naturally founder Candyce Ihnot is blogging again! Last year, after starting a Read Live reading lab in a new school, Candyce wrote a series of blog posts about her experiences. Teachers couldn’t get enough of her helpful tips & tricks, endless wisdom, and relatable stories. Due to popular demand, she is back again this year to share even more Stories From the Lab. In this post, she describes the many benefits of inviting parents and teachers into the reading lab.

Progress monitoring is a key reason why the Read Naturally Strategy is so successful. When students can easily monitor their own progress, they’re motivated to stay focused on the task at hand in order to continue improving. But the self-monitoring of progress by students is only half of the progress-monitoring story in any Read Naturally classroom. Read Naturally teachers must also monitor their students’ progress in order to make the necessary adjustments to help accelerate growth. For this reason, Read Naturally programs include detailed reports and graphs that make tracking growth a breeze for teachers.

Placement is one of the most important tasks you’ll do as a Read Naturally educator. When a student is working in the correct level of material with an appropriate goal, he or she will be able to make optimal gains in reading. While it is the student’s responsibility to work toward these gains, it is your responsibility to determine the correct level and goal.

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.

The new school year is quickly approaching. Soon the building will be flooded with students both familiar and new. To ensure a smooth start for all of your students—and, most especially, for you—advance preparations to your classroom and curricula are essential.

We’re excited to announce the release of our best-ever version of Read Live: Read Live 2.0. This release includes a number of important updates for security and performance.

Though we’ve had a very good year, I have some ideas for making things even better next year. (Don’t all of us teachers begin to think of next year even before the current year ends?)

For Read Live students who have been making progress each day for the entire school year, a three-month summer break isn’t ideal. Best-case scenario: They’ll read a lot on their own and continue to make progress. Worst-case scenario: They won’t read at all, and they’ll lose some valuable gains. The worst-case scenario is, unfortunately, more common. But of course, it’s not going to happen to your students! That’s because your students can continue to use Read Live over the summer—for free.

Rachel is a slow keyboarder who needs additional time to type her predictions and retells. Timothy is an ELL student who will benefit most from one read along in Spanish and three in English. James is an older student who needs just one read along and who wants to finish the story each time he practices. Anna is struggling with phonics and needs 75 seconds, as opposed to one minute, for word list timings. Can Read Live accommodate all of these students’ unique needs?

​The long Minnesota winter is finally over! The snow is gone, the air is warmer, the sun is shining (sometimes), and now that daylight savings is here, the days suddenly feel longer. As much as I love spring (and truly I do!), it causes me some dismay, because I know how its arrival can negatively impact the work ethic of some students.

Make Your Student a STAR!

Read Naturally Star of the Month​Share your student’s success story—nominate him or her for our Star of the Month award. Win a Barnes & Noble gift card for the student and a Read Naturally gift certificate for your class!

pointer Submit a Star-of-the-Month entry

Categories

Archive

Contact

Please let us know what questions you have so we can assist. For Technical Support, please call us or submit a software support request.

 
Click to refresh image