Meara Mooney
Megan Rosebblatt
Meara Mooney
Megan Rosebblatt
"It's all about practice. AR encourages substantial differentiated reading practice to create strong readers. Based on each student's independent reading level, AR helps teachers set personalized goals for each student, and guide students to books difficult enough to keep them challenged, but not so difficult to cause frustration. In addition, AR helps teachers monitor students' vocabulary growth, literacy skills development, and other reading skills."
The STAR Reading Enterprise Assessment component of the Accelerated Reader program provides formative assessment to measure student success and achievement. "The STAR Reading Enterprise assessments include progress monitoring, standards benchmarking, as well as Student Growth Percentile measurements. Teachers can screen their entire class in minutes to reveal which students need to reach benchmark, and to help group students by proficiency levels."
CAHSEE scores as well as the new Smarter Balance CCSS assessments will also be used to assess the program's effectiveness.
"First, a student’s optimal reading level is determined through the STAR Reading Enterprise assessment. This assessment provides information on a student’s overall reading ability and suggests a range of book levels for each student called the “zone of proximal development”, or ZPD. An entire class can be screened in approximately 15 minutes.
Teachers then meet with each student to set three individualized reading practice goals based on reading quantity, quality, and difficulty and monitor progress toward those goals.
Students read books of interest at their own reading level. AR BookFinder makes it easy to find the perfect book.
The Truckee High School English/Language Arts PLC consists of English teachers, Spanish Teachers, an ELD teacher, and a Librarian. We all agree that the Accelerated Reader program can reinforce the accountability piece required to make school wide SSR successful. Accelerated Reader was purchased through Title 1 funds for North Tahoe High School, and is has been a successful component of their literacy program. We'd like the opportunity to expand this effective program district wide.