What’s Right and Wrong about Read Naturally?
Although there is much that is “right” about Read Naturally for some students, there is much that is also “wrong” about the program and how it has been applied in our schools. By way of full disclosure, as a reading specialist, I have used Read Naturally in a variety of settings and found the program to be beneficial in some cases. Additionally, as an educational author, I have my own reading fluency program (described at the end of the article), so these being said upfront, “Let the buyer (reader) beware.”
Read Naturally is a hugely successful reading fluency program, developed in 1991 by Candyce Ihnot. The program’s proponents have been many, including “top name” reading researchers, especially those hired on as Read Naturally presenters, and countless teacher testimonials. The program’s detractors have been few. This article will summarize the program for the uninitiated, discuss the controversies regarding the program’s research base, and analyze the pros and cons of the program from the perspective of an MA reading specialist who has personally used Read Naturally with students and also supervised Read Naturally intervention programs at several elementary schools.
What is Read Naturally?
As http://readnaturally.com/ defines its program focus: “Fluency is the ability to read as well as we speak, and make sense of the text without stopping to decode each word. Read Naturally develops fluency using products that increase accuracy, speed, and vocal expression.”
The company describes the components of its program as follows: “Read Naturally’s structured intervention programs combine teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring — three strategies that research has shown are effective in improving students’ reading proficiency. Using audio support and graphs of their progress, students work with high-interest material at their skill level.
Teacher Modeling: With teacher modeling, a proficient reader models good, correct reading for a less able reader. In Read Naturally, students read along while listening to a recording of a fluent reader. This helps students learn new words and encourages proper pronunciation, expresson, and phrasing.
Repeated Reading: Repeated reading is another strategy that research has shown improves fluency. In Read Naturally, students practice reading a story until they can read it at a pre-determined goal rate. Mastering a story helps students build fluency and confidence.
Progress Monitoring: Daily monitoring of student progress has also been shown to improve student achievement. Students become more involved in the learning process, and teachers remain aware of each student’s progress. In Read Naturally, students monitor their progress by graphing the number of words read correctly before practicing and then again after practicing. The graph shows the students’ progress, motivating them to continue to read and improve.” http://www.readnaturally.com/approach/default.htm
Program Nuts and Bolts
To be a bit more specific, Read Naturally is designed to improve reading fluency using a combination of books, audiotapes, and computer software… Students work at a reading level appropriate for their achievement level, progress through the program at their own rate, and work, for the most part, on an independent basis. The program has two versions. In one, students use audiocassettes or CDs in conjunction with hard-copy reading materials. In the second version, students use the Read Naturally computer program alone. The Read Naturally program is designed to increase time spent reading. http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/WWC_Read_Naturally_071607.pdf
The Read Naturally Reading Research Issues
Countless testimonials attest to the efficacy of this reading fluency program. However, the research base for these glowing reports has been mixed. The research studies cited on the Read Naturally website show impressive gains in fluency for children from kindergarten to seventh grade. However, according to the United States Department of Education What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), researchers evaluated 14 of the research studies involving the use of Read Naturally and came to these conclusions:
“One study of Read Naturally met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards, and one study met WWC evidence standards with reservations. The two studies included 106 students from first and second grades in two elementary schools in Arizona and Georgia. Based on these two studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for Read Naturally to be small for fluency and comprehension. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed alphabetics or general reading achievement.
Read Naturally was found to have no discernible effects on fluency and reading comprehension.” http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/WWC_Read_Naturally_071607.pdf
Of course, no publisher wants the effectiveness of its program to be labeled as having “no discernible effects on fluency and reading comprehension,” especially by the United States Department of Education. In response, Read Naturally has dismissed the conclusions reached by the WWC regarding these two research studies by commenting as follows:
“By not using Read Naturally materials as intended, the Hancock and Denton studies reviewed by WWC did not assess the effectiveness of the strategy.” In digging a bit deeper, I found the Read Naturally’s complaints about the two studies that met the WWC criteria and the WWC analyses of these studies. The Read Naturally complaints involve what I would consider to be relatively insignificant variables: 1. the failure of the researchers to pre-teach vocabulary 2. the failure of the researchers to continue fluency practice until the students’ goals were attained and 3. the fact that the researchers used some word recognition flashcards as part of the dedicated Read Naturally intervention time, thus minimally reducing the Read Naturally recommended intervention time. In my view, Read Naturally is certainly being a bit nick-picky in their dismissal of the WWC educational research findings.
In fact, Read Naturally goes even further to dismiss the WWC conclusions. Read Naturally turns the tables on the WWC and criticizes the expertise and credibility of these United States Department of Education researchers:
“An analysis of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) leadership shows limited expertise in reading instruction among its key staff and principal investigators. Only two of the 14 key staff and principal investigators could be considered experts in reading instruction. Furthermore, WWC does not specialize in reading. This organization reviews a wide range of educational products, from math to high school dropout programs.”
and
“Based on Read Naturally’s research on and experience with these consumer guides, as well as our knowledge of the studies they analyzed, we assert that the FCRR and the University of Oregon reviews provide valid critiques of our strategy. The WWC reviews do not.” Two other links from the Read Naturally website downplay the findings of the WWC:
1. Chart comparing the WWC, FCRR, and University of Oregon
2. http://www.readnaturally.com/approach/evaluators.htm
Furthermore, the highly respected Best Evidence Encyclopedia from John Hopkins University School of Education, headed by Robert E. Slavin characterizes the Read Naturally program as “Limited Evidence of Effectiveness: Weak Evidence with Notable Effects” with no “qualifying studies.” http://www.bestevidence.org/
Evaluating How the Read Naturally Program Works: The Pros
- Fluency is highly correlated to reading comprehension and the Read Naturally program generally does a good job in remediating this reading deficit for both children and adults.
- Students generally enjoy both the content and the process of the Read Naturally program design.
- The program is highly motivational. The kids love the two-color pencils for the “cold” (unpracticed) and “hot” (practiced) fluency timings. They love the personal goal-setting and the progress monitoring charts.
- Students reading slightly below grade-level fluency norms tend to improve in their unpracticed timings after a few months.
- Students like reading along with the high-interest non-fiction passages. The passages are very interesting to both children and adults. The multi-cultural focus of the passages gives students of all background buy-in to the program and some prior knowledge is already built-in because of the passage content.
- The passages are also leveled appropriately. The Brief Oral Screener does a fairly good and quick job at placing students at their “fluency levels.”
- The program can be run by a supervising paraprofessional. No real teacher expertise is required.
- The management system, including the equipment, works well and prevents off-task behavior problems.
- The thirty minute sessions, three times per week, are reasonable amounts of time for reading intervention in or out of class.
- The Read Naturally is systematic and quantitative. The numerical components of words per minute, fluency norms, and number of miscues makes for easy progress monitoring and data analysis. Teachers who use Read Naturally have impressive reading matrices.
Evaluating How the Read Naturally Program Works: The Cons
- Teachers tend to expect Read Naturally to solve all reading problems. It doesn’t. Read Naturally does not remediate phonological awareness or decoding deficits (although there is a separate Read Naturally phonics program). Read Naturally does not address vocabulary deficits. Read Naturally does not teach reading comprehension.
- Although the program is highly motivational, students do get bored, especially after a few months. Many students are “motivated” to cheat in their timings and recordings, especially when natural competitiveness among children is not actively limited by the paraprofessional or teacher.
- Although the Brief Oral Screener properly places students for fluency practice, the suggested reading levels limit student improvement. For example, a student may improve in his reading level after the fourth passage in Level 5.0; however, there are twenty more passages to go in that level and the teacher would have little clue that he needs to be reassessed. Usually, students just complete their level and move on to the next. Although the program pushes students to read faster, it does not push students to read more complex text with higher vocabulary, more syllables per word, longer sentences, and more difficult sentence structure.
- Students reading far below grade-level fluency norms tend to improve less than their slightly below grade-level peers. This is probably due to more severe reading problems, especially phonemic awareness and decoding issues.
- Many teachers have at or above grade-level fluency readers participate in the program and little reading gain is noted by these students.
- The Read Naturally passages are high-interest and all non-fictional, which are positives. However, the passages are a strange mixture of narrative and exposition. This is unfortunate because at the age that many students begin using the Read Naturally fluency program (third-fourth grade), that is when most of their academic reading shifts from narrative to exposition. Read Naturally passages are distinctively different than the students’ social studies and science books. Thus, less transfer of text knowledge and text schema from Read Naturally is readily made to what becomes the bulk of student academic reading. I’ve noticed that students do not transfer their fluency skill-set from the Read Naturally passages to other “real” classroom reading nearly as much as teachers would like.
- Using Read Naturally as an intervention program can be reductive. For many remedial reading students, fluency is not the greatest issue. Yet, these students may only receive differentiated fluency instruction because there are no other programs, there is no more allotted reading intervention time, or there is no teaching expertise to address different reading needs. The relevant question is… “What else could be done with 90 instructional minutes in the week?”
- Such intense focus on the “reading skill” of fluency may supplant focus on reading comprehension. Ask most students what they are learning, using Read Naturally, and they will say, “We’re learning to read faster with better expression.” They won’t say, “We’re learning how to understand our reading more” or “We’re learning about____.”
Indeed, the five question (mostly literal) comprehension response for Levels .8—5.0 and the nine questions for 5.6 on up are woefully inadequate for comprehension.
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The “look at the title and picture and predict what the story is about” and brief pre-teaching the pronunciation of difficult words is woefully inadequate to promote access to prior knowledge. The questions at the end of the selection are not previewed. No purpose is established for the reading, other than to read quickly, accurately, and with good expression. In my experience, students answer the questions by skimming the passage for the answers once the repeated readings are done. Thus, reading and comprehension, are in reality, two separate processes from the students’ perspectives. There is no internal monitoring of the text, nor any self-questioning strategies, nor any reader response in terms of reflection or analysis. Reading is passive, although very fast!
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Although exposed to good content vocabulary in the passages, little is done with unknown words. Students are not required to activate context clue strategies with unknown words. One of the comprehension questions is vocabulary-based, but this is hardly enough to develop vocabulary. - Read Naturally is extremely expensive. The cost of one level of reading passages is well over $100.00. Site or district licenses are available, but are costly. The program does not include the multiple cassette or CD-players or computer stations. That does not include the $9.00 per dozen two-color pencils. You get the idea.
Are there any reasonable alternatives to comprehensive reading intervention, which includes fluency practice for those who need it and address the major concerns presented with respect to the Read Naturally program? Yes. The author of this article, Mark Pennington, is pleased to present the comprehensive reading intervention program, Teaching Reading Strategies (TRS). TRS uses the five SCRIP Comprehension Strategies to teach readers how to independently interact with and understand both narrative and expository text. The SCRIP acronym stands for Summarize, Connect, Re-think, Interpret, and Predict. All five SCRIP strategies are reinforced in each of the 43 Animal Passage Comprehension Worksheets. These brief high-interest all-expository passages have been designed for remedial or reluctant readers. Each article describes the key features, life cycle, and habitat of the animals featured on the Animal Sound-Spelling Study Cards, and provides interesting facts about each animal’s role within its own ecosystem. Passages are leveled in a unique pyramid design: the first two paragraphs are at an adjusted third grade (Fleish-Kincaid) level (after deleting a few key multi-syllabic words such as carnivores or long animal names such as armadillos); the next two paragraphs are at the fifth grade level; and the last two are at the seventh grade level. The reader begins practice at an easier level to build confidence and then moves to more difficult academic language and sentence length. This helps students “push through” the limiting barriers of “one reading level fits all” fluency passages. Each of the articles is recorded at three different speeds to ensure that your students are challenged at the appropriate reading rates.
Animal Passage Comprehension Worksheets each have five questions–one question for each of the five strategies. The questions are placed in the right-hand margin and require students to interact with the article. Students answer the questions in the margins. Additionally, three key vocabulary words are boldfaced. Students should define and use vocabulary words in original context clue sentences on the back of their worksheets. Each worksheet takes students about fifteen minutes to complete. A Teacher Answer Key follows the worksheets.
Additionally, Teaching Reading Strategies provides multiple choice reading assessments on two CDs, formative assessments, blending and syllabication activities, phonemic awareness and phonics workshops, comprehension worksheets, multi-level fluency passages on eight CDs, 390 flashcards, posters, activities, and games. Everything teachers need to teach a diagnostically-based reading intervention program for struggling readers at all reading levels is found in this comprehensive curriculum. Perfect for ESL and Special Education students, who struggle with language/auditory processing challenges. Simple directions and well-crafted activities truly make this an almost no-prep curriculum. Works well as a half-year intensive program or full-year program, with or without paraprofessional assistance. 364 pages
