For the Week of October 12th

Did you ever wonder what your child does when they work on the computer program Read Naturally? Read Naturally is a research based program that we use both in small pull-out groups and in the classrooms to work on reading skills. Students begin by choosing a story. Each story is introduced with vocabulary words. Then the student uses those words, the picture, the title and their background knowledge to write a prediction about what they think the story will be about. Next the student does a cold read of the story and is timed. This tells the student how fast they read the story without any practice. Then they listen to the story up to three times as a model for fluent reading and to help them learn the words that they don't know. After listening, the student practices reading the story themselves. Each student has been given an individualized goal for how fast he needs to be able to orally read the story. When he is able to read the story at that rate and he knows all the words, he moves on to the comprehension quiz. The quiz includes both multiple choice and short answer questions. After that the student must write a short summary of the story. When all of these steps are accomplished, the student is ready to pass. The teacher comes to listen to the student read the story aloud. The teacher counts the errors, listens for fluency and times the student. The teacher also looks over the written work and makes comments and suggestions for improvement. If the student passes, he then picks a new story to read. The three big areas of reading most worked on in 3rd-5th grades are fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. All three of these areas are addressed with Read Naturally.