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Read Live is highly customizable to meet each student’s individual needs. Our phonics offerings within this program are no exception. Read Live makes it easy for students who need phonics support to either progress sequentially through systematic phonics instruction, or to focus specifically on the phonics pattern(s) they need to master.

Overview of Read Live’s Phonics Offerings

To address students’ phonics needs, Read Live includes the Read Naturally Live phonics series and Word Warm-ups Live.

Read Naturally Live offers phonics levels in the following categories:

• Level 0.8: short vowels
• Level 1.3: long vowels
• Level 1.8: consonant digraphs and blends
• Level 2.3: r-controlled vowels and other letter combinations, including soft c and g and silent letter combinations
• Level 2.6: short vowels within compound/multisyllabic words, many including common affixes
• Level 2.7: long vowels within compound/multisyllabic words, many including common affixes

In the Read Naturally Live phonics levels, students follow the Read Naturally Strategy to build fluency while working through a story, but each story and its supporting activities focus on the decoding of a featured phonics pattern. For example, Mimes is a long i story in level 1.3 that includes a lesson about long i and many different long i words in the story and activities.

Word Warm-ups Live includes the following three levels:

• Level 1: one-syllable words
• Level 2: two-syllable words
• Level 3: multisyllabic words

In Word Warm-ups Live, students work through audio-supported phonics exercises that provide in-depth instruction to build mastery and automaticity in phonics and decoding. These exercises work well as a complete phonics intervention or as a phonics “warm-up” before working in Read Naturally Live stories.

Using These Programs to Fill Phonics Gaps

When you assess students to identify their phonics needs using a tool like the Word Warm-ups Live phonics assessment or Quick Phonics Screener, you’ll often find students who have mastered certain phonics patterns but not others. Even within a certain skill, such as short vowels, it is not uncommon to have a student who has mastered some of the patterns (short a and short i, for example), but who needs help in others (short e, o, and u). Read Live makes it easy for these students to work only on the phonics skills they need to develop. These students can target the phonics patterns they’re struggling with by focusing on specific Read Naturally Live phonics stories or specific Word Warm-ups Live exercises.

Consider the student whose phonics assessment indicates they have mastered short a and short i but not short e, o, and u. If that student’s Read Live placement score indicates they are capable of reading the material in Read Naturally Live level 0.8, you could assign them only the short e, o, and u stories in that level. You can do this in the Change Level/Series/Goal category of the Teacher Menu. You’ll see all the stories listed on the right side of the page with a button to turn them on or off. Keep the stories you want the student to complete (the short e, o, and u stories) selected, and turn off the ones you don’t (the short a and i stories).

Similarly, you could choose specific Word Warm-ups Live exercises for this student. Again, in the Change Level/Series/Goal category of the Teacher Menu, you’ll see all the exercises in the Word Warm-ups Live level. You can turn on the short e, o, and u exercises and turn off the others.

Note that you typically wouldn’t use both Read Naturally Live phonics stories and Word Warm-ups Live at the same time. However, if you find that the student still needs to work on the targeted phonics patterns after completing the stories/exercises in either Read Naturally Live or Word Warm-ups Live, you could then have them switch to the other program for additional practice.

For more information on choosing where to place students with phonics needs, check out this webinar. In it, our teacher trainer Claire covers how to determine whether a student should be placed in the Read Naturally Live phonics series or in Word Warm-ups Live.

We’re here to help!

Phonics is an essential component of reading, but phonics needs can vary greatly from student to student. This is why our programs are customizable to meet each student’s individual needs efficiently and effectively. If you need help interpreting the results of your students’ phonics assessments and determining where to place them for optimal success, please reach out. We’re confident we can help you find the right stories or exercises to ensure they master the phonics skills they need.