Intervention Programs

Joel Olson was fantastic in helping me solve an issue with Read Naturally Live. Thanks!

Read Live is an excellent program that truly targets fluency through research-based strategies. It is relatively easy to use and is perfect for use with interventions and special education students with fluency goals. Plus, Read Naturally has excellent customer service; I have never had a bad experience with tech support or any other support staff with whom I've worked. The only thing I would say about Read Live is that, sometimes, the comprehension questions get a bit cumbersome at the end to score, and it's overwhelming to go over ALL of the types of questions with the students. You have to choose a few types to focus on at any given time, or it takes a long time to move students from story to story.

It is always refreshing to deal with a company that not only provides a stellar product for teachers and students, but who also provides excellent customer service. We have been using the self-study, hands-on training workbooks for Read Live since January, and find them extremely well-done and easy to follow. We needed to order quite a few more as more of our teachers begin to use Read Live, and after a phone call to Christy Baldinger, I had a quote within minutes at a savings of $300 to my district. Can you say "Made My Day!"? Thank you for making your customers feel valued while providing support for our students. We appreciate it!

I have been using Read Naturally for over ten years. My special needs students at both the upper elementary and high school level have all benefited from it. Reading fluency has improved for most students in just a short time. Students like the stories that they have to choose from. RN makes it possible to work with several students at the same time, who are reading at different levels and have different reading needs. Read Live is a nice improvement to the program as well as the ipad app.

Read Live has not only helped build the fluency of my students but it has increased their overall confidence in all areas of study. I have seen student faces light up when the meet their reading goals. I hear them reading with more pride and confidence.

Love this program! My LAP Reading students are so motivated and we are already seeing positive results after 2 months!

I love this program and so do my students. I love how it builds their confidence. I am a special education teacher who teaches 4th and 5th graders who struggle with reading. I was very surprised that their retell comprehension scores for DIBELS went up dramatically after using this program for 3 months. When they come to the retell section I have them tell me three things about the story. They have learned to pay more attention to what is going on in the story. They have also learned about self-correcting and their errors have decreased dramatically. I am so glad we have iPads. It does make a difference using iPads verses the paper version. Last year I had 5th graders on a different reading fluency program. I would have them read a passage for 1 minutes, three times. They complained about reading it 3 times. Now they are doing about 8 rereads and no complaining and I think it is because of the iPads. The only thing I wish that they would have is an option to slow down the read along. For some of my students it is too fast or it confuses them. The first read along I have them listen, the second read along they take the headphones off and read out loud and the third read along I have them read with the reader. Hope this helps give an idea about the benefits of this program. Love it!!

Read Naturally LIve is a fantastic program. The stories are very engaging for my 4th graders. I am using the program with my low readers and they LOVE it.

READ LIVE is the best tool I have for my struggling readers. The process used in each story is highly effective for students with learning and language deficits. It allows me to address reading and speaking goals at the same time. Students find the texts interesting and are empowered as they monitor their own growth. I love READ LIVE and don't believe I could do my job without it.

Ben and Barb were very helpful with the process of purchasing our licenses and merging all our trial licenses into the master account. Ben did an excellent job conducting the webinar with our district principals and some gen ed teachers who have not used Read Naturally in the past. We appreciated all their patience and support throughout the process!!!

Read Naturally is a great product and the company provides excellent technical and educational support for its users. The students love reading the stories and have improved their reading scores tremendously. I would highly recommend it.

The teachers are still figuring out how to manage the program. There are two teachers, one full time and one half time. I come two mornings a week as the RST Since one teacher has 5-8 in the mornings and 1-8 in the afternoon, he's the most challenged. But we are working on it. Unfortunately he's only just now actually started exploring it. )-: The part time primary teacher has had her students working on it and loves it. So, it's a 4 until we are all on board.

We have used Read Naturally as an intervention for approximately five years & we are now in the process of moving to the LIVE version. Features that we appreciate are: passages of high student interest, vocabulary development by way of key words & a blend of comprehension questions that provide students the important opportunity to transfer thoughts to writing~ reflecting best practices in reading comprehension. Both the paper/pencil and LIVE version also include another best practice: student goal setting and tracking of progress. We thank you for a thoughtful product!
-Jennifer H, Principal, Rochester, NH

We use Read Live in before/after school tutoring as well during the day in a section of reading interventions. As a school we believe any student who is having difficulty with the oral reading fluency gets the Read Live instruction during their day at school. We have been seeing students oral reading fluency continue to grow as they read and answer all of the variety of questions and complete the activities in the Read Live computer program. - Jill Darland, Resource Teacher , Durango, Colorado

At the beginning of November, we began a 60-day trial using ReadLive with small groups of students in Grades 6, 7, and 8 whom we identified to be reading two or more grades below their current grade level. We are so thrilled with the progress demonstrated by these students and their increased confidence and engagement with reading that we are now subscribers to the program. We appreciate the individualized nature of the program because it allows each student to work at his/her own reading level. The focus on non-fiction selections provides a wealth of fascinating topics that engage students with a variety of interests. We also find that our middle years students don't question the maturity level of the selections they are reading because they are non-fiction. We have readers at very early stages of their reading development, and it is essential for their engagement that they don't see themselves as reading "baby" books. The required practices that students must do to pass a selection are so important for them to build fluency and confidence. When they meet their reading goals (words correct per minute), they are thrilled. These are students who have not experienced a lot of success in the regular classroom, and they are blossoming as they get to taste success. The program focuses on accuracy, fluency, the development of vocabulary, and comprehension skills... everything that these students need. We are currently looking at ways that we can incorporate ReadLive with more of our middle years students because we can see the potential in this program and the benefit it can have for a much wider range of students.

As a teacher I have seen amazing progress in my classroom with my below grade level readers. The stories are appropriate and inviting and encourages the reading of Non-Fiction.

As a parent I have implemented the free trial with my eighth grader who is not motivated to "read for information" as our standardize tests require. I have seen tremendous improvement on her concentration and her ability to recall the story.

Overall an exciting program that kids seem to love.

Christine Thornton, ESE teacher, Tallahassee, Florida

Read Naturally has been an amazing life changing program. When my son was finishing second grade he was still a struggling reader despite our work with him at home and excellent teachers at school. He was a choppy reader that took a long time to finish a book. He could comprehend books read to him at a high level, we know the potential was there. My brother who taught in Minneapolis shared the Read Naturally program with me and I used it with Kevin for about 3-4 months over that summer and into third grade. He got over the hump and became a reader! He turned into a kid that walked around on the playground and read the Magic Tree House books during third grade! Our son was diagnosed with dyslexia around this same time, but the Read Naturally program helped him become a reader. He is now a successful college student!

Currently the school I teach at is adopting Read Live as an intervention for struggling readers in middle and high school. We're on our third week of using the program and many of the students are starting to show improvements already! The stories are engaging; students have an opportunity to build vocabulary and comprehension while becoming fluent readers.

I was first introduced to Read Naturally via the CDs when I ran a free community-wide after school homework program over 10 years ago. I found it worked well. Later when I began homeschooling my 11 year old niece I used Read Naturally as her reading program. She had great fluency but absolutely no comprehension. I was able to get her to grade level in about 1.5 years (she did one story a day five days a week and all 24 stories in a level). She started at Level 3.5 and was at grade level when she completed Level 5.6.

I am now working as basically the Resource Teacher in a small private school and switched from the CDs to Read Live two years ago. I have students with little to no fluency and/or comprehension. By using Read Live these students have progressed from 1.5 to 3 grade levels in a single school year. I prefer that they do a story at least three times a week and I have students who request more opportunities to read. With the increased ability to read, some of the students with behavioral issues have had a significant reduction in incidents. Most of the students are able to progress to the next level after only 12 stories. I have a small form that the students take back to class (with a second copy to go home) so the classroom teacher can see the title of the story and the cold/practice/hot read timings. The students particularly enjoy this aspect and are very proud of their daily work.

In working with the students, I have found it very useful that I am able to move students between the Phonics and Sequenced formats and to select stories based on the phonemic components. One student did very well in the sequenced series initially but once she started seeing words with long vowels and vowel digraphs she needed to move to the phonics series.

Although the program is geared to school age students, the stories are also very appropriate to adult learners.

Our school district recently moved from the CD version of Read Naturally to Read Naturally Live. We instantly noticed an increase in student engagement, accountability, and productivity. The students are asking their teachers when they get to leave the class to work on Read Naturally Live, they love it and so do we!