Accelerated Reader AR is a computerized reading program in use at all our District schools. Students from first grade through high school are involved in AR. AR has two main pieces: Accelerated Reader and STAR Reading. STAR Reading is a brief test that students take to find out what level is best for them to read. The test is mostly vocabulary based, although, as students grow in skill, reading of paragraphs will be included. The results of the STAR test are called a ZPD or a Reading Range. Students will start out reading lower in their range and move up based on the results of the tests that they take in Accelerated Reader and with their teacher’s guidance. The STAR test is not available in Spanish and measures only English reading skills. Accelerated Reader provides brief comprehension quizzes to determine if a student understood the book that they read. We have quizzes for: Books in the library Books teachers have requested a quiz for Books students have requested a quiz for All quizzes are purchased from Renaissance Learning, and in some cases we will have a quiz, but not a book. Students are welcome to get the book from a bookstore or the public library. By viewing our AR quizlist online for your school, you can see what we have available in your student’s level. Please do not consider the reading levels of the quiz to be a grade level. It might loosely match up with grades at the lower levels, but this tends not to be true at the higher levels. Very low readers (0.2-0.9) may be better off doing their AR as a group process. This includes hearing the story read aloud, discussing the story and coming to a group agreement on the correct answer when taking the test. By doing this they will learn the program and also what kind of information to look for when reading. Once students are skilled enough to read somewhat independently, they begin taking the tests on their own. As they succeed at each level they are moved up. Students should always have a chance to read good literature at ANY level. When students can handle a level 5.8 or so, they should have pretty much freedom to read anything, even the lower levels, as they are still getting good exposure to vocabulary and ideas. Most adult books would fall into an AR level of about 5.6, so you can see that even as a child’s grade goes up, the need for the AR level to go up may not correspond. Please don’t cut

children off from reading good literature for young people by keeping them hemmed in to a level 6 and above. They should be actively reading books (such as series books) that stimulate their imagination and stretch their knowledge. This can happen, for older children, with books from 4.0 and up. The high levels (7.0 – 13) include long biographies, books about countries and cultures, Shakespeare’s plays and other topics that don’t serve as recreational reading for middle and high school students. Students can and should practice reading at the higher levels, but on an everyday basis, it’s much better for them to be reading age-appropriate books that interest them. AR is meant to inspire a love of reading, not a feeling of being trapped. Scoring 85-90% on a test is really the best score. It indicates that the book was understood, but not too easy for the child. (This would be 80-90% on short books that have only 5 or 10 questions.) Scoring 100% repeatedly usually means the child needs to be reading either a higher level, or a more complex book at a lower level. Based on the student’s test score, children earn “points” for their reading, which are often used to award prizes. Why do we purchase tests that we don’t own a book for? The book may have been lost after the test purchase and is out of print so it can’t be replaced. Public libraries may still have this book available. In some cases it’s a matter of age appropriateness. For instance, we ordered the highly popular tests for the Twilight series at our elementary schools, but did not order the books because they weren’t age appropriate for many of our students. If students wish to purchase the books and read them, the tests are available. We also try to provide tests for the many titles that teachers have purchased for their classrooms and to fill student requests for popular titles they are reading on their own. Why do we order books for which there is no test? We try to keep up with new publications, and librarians have a very good eye for what will become AR in the future. Renaissance Learning tries to cover as many books as possible as they are published, but they can’t develop a test for a book they haven’t read, so sometimes there’s a little lag time between the time we receive the book and the time we have a test for it. Why don’t we just have ALL the AR tests? There are too many of them. There are about 60,000 of them and the list grows weekly. Many of the titles are ones we don’t need, and at $3.00 per test it’s not cost effective. If you have questions about AR or its use in our schools, you can always direct them to Gayle Hodur [email protected].