Read Naturally Encore: Steps

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The Encore steps are designed so that students can work independently, stay motivated, and spend the majority of their time reading. Although students will be working independently most of the time, teacher support is necessary to help individual students progress through some of the steps.

The steps are summarized below. For detailed explanations, see "Understanding the Steps" in the Encore II Teacher's Manual.
​ Download the Encore II Teacher's Manual
Read Naturally Encore/ME steps poster (PDF)

1. Pick a story.
   The student selects a story from the set of stories provided in the student’s folder. Allowing the student to select a story based on personal interest motivates the student. 
2. Learn the key words.
   The student listens to or reads along quietly with the audio. In most series, the student reads along or listens to definitions of the key words or phrases in order to learn the meaning. In Phonics, the key words are used to teach the featured phonics pattern(s), so the audio includes a phonics lesson instead of definitions. 
3. Write a prediction.
   The student uses the story title, illustration, and key words to come up with a prediction of what the story will be about. This encourages the student to think about what he or she is going to read and prepares the student to read for meaning. 
4. Do your cold timing.
   This step determines how many words the student can read correctly in one minute when reading a new, unpracticed story. This provides baseline data for progress monitoring, which helps motivate the student and guide the teacher. The teacher should conduct the first three cold timings in order to check the student’s initial placement. The teacher then decides whether to continue conducting the timings or have the student self-time. 
5. Graph your score in blue.
   The student graphs the cold-timing score on the fluency graph by coloring the appropriate number of squares in blue.
6. Read along to learn the story.
   The student reads along quietly with a recording of the entire story to learn to read all the words in the story with proper pronunciation and expression.
7. Practice reading on your own.
   The student times him- or herself reading the story quietly aloud, without audio support, several times, until able to reach the words-correct-per-minute (WCPM) goal the teacher set during the placement process. The purpose of this step is for the student to learn to read the story fluently and to understand what the story is about. 
8. Answer the questions.
   The student answers the questions either while waiting for a hot timing or after completing a hot timing. The purpose of this step is to emphasize reading for meaning and to develop the ability to answer many types of questions.
9. Pass the story,
   The student reads the story for the teacher to show that he or she can read it at the goal rate, with appropriate expression, and with three or fewer errors. The teacher corrects or reviews the comprehension questions with the student.
10. Graph your score in red.
    The student graphs the hot-timing score in red above the cold-timing score (in blue) to show how much the student’s fluency has improved. The student also graphs his or her comprehension and retelling/summary scores.
11. Retell the story or practice the words.
    In most series, the student retells or summarizes the story. This emphasizes the importance of reading for meaning, and connects reading to writing.
    In Phonics, the student practices reading a word list to build automaticity and then writes three words that are dictated in the audio to learn to write/spell words with the featured phonics patterns.