Read Naturally

Three 6th grade students meet with their teacher, Ms. Gold, for a daily Language Focus Area (LFA) lesson. The students are engaged in a structured reading intervention program called Read Naturally that combines teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring. Research has proven that these three important strategies are very effective in improving students’ reading proficiency and fluency.

The lesson begins with the students selecting a short story to read that is displayed on their personal computer. On this day, one student selects, “The Lake That Disappeared.” The first screen that appears identifies several key words that are in the story, and by selecting these words, the students can read a description of them. The keywords in this story are salt mine, whirlpool, collapse, and dissolve.

After reviewing the vocabulary words, the students type their prediction of what will happen in the story into the Read Naturally software program. One student writes, “I predict that the whirlpool devours all of the things around it.”

Then at different times, each child reads the story aloud without any intervention by Ms. Gold; simultaneously, the teacher uses these opportunities to assess each student’s reading skills.

Then using audio support, the students listen to a recording of the story by a fluent reader. This helps students to learn proper pronunciation, expression, and phrasing. The students read the story aloud several more times until they have reached their “words per minute” goal. This section of the exercise concludes with the students answering several questions, about the content of the story, prompted on their personal computers.

The final step is to assess if the students are ready to pass the online test. The goals are to read at a predetermined speed, with expression, and with accuracy. After each student reads the story aloud, Ms. Gold assesses if the student spoke with expression and if he/she read each word accurately. The time it takes each student to read the story is recorded and then is displayed on a graph.

Read Naturally provides strategies and structure for improving comprehension and proficiency in reading. The ultimate goal is to give our students the skills to master reading and build their confidence in learning independently.