We can present Accelerated Reader to your teaching staff. The presentation can be after school, during school hours or via web-meeting if you are remote.
Our presentation of the product typically involves a complete look at how you might use the tool and the student outcomes you might see. Ultimately we try to make our sessions [...]
Many of you will know that EdAlliance bought the online version of Accelerated Reader to Australia in 2009. AR Advantage is the name of this online, fully hosted and integrated package of software.
We have developed a new website that will explain the new version if you are interested in upgrading.
You can visit the site at www.ARUpgrade.com.au
The massive “gap-filling” task that we embarked on at the beginning of this 2010 is now really taking off. We have release more than 2,000 quizzes in the past 6 weeks. These quizzes are all gaps in series that were started over the years and not completed. There are also lots of new titles in amongst this all to.
Considering the number of pages this release has stretched to, I contemplated the different ways I can make it more readable. So the end result is splitting it into the various sections based on Interest Level of the quizzes.
So here are the quiz release PDF’s for this month:
The Lower Years (K-4) – AU Quiz Release – 2010 05 – LY
The Middle Years (5-8) – AU Quiz Release – 2010 05 – MY
The Upper Years (9+) – AU Quiz Release – 2010 05 – UY
There have been more than 2,000 quizzes released into the Australian AR quiz store this year. I feel like we are really accelerating the filling of the gaps and I hope that you see this too. There have been a few little hiccups like the odd duplicate or the wrong jacket image appearing on www.ARBookFind.com.au, but all of these are been fixed right now.
With all these new quizzes I have been thinking about how a school matches their library collection to the available quizzes. AR Advantage customers can access AR Bookguide as part of their annual subscription. AR Desktop customers can access the AR Quiz Manager tool developed, sold and supported by Libcode Library Systems. But what about a simple service to help schools just do a one off match of their libraries to the AR Quiz list…
I am not sure that anyone really wants this service, but it might make things very much easier to find quizzes in these new big releases.
All you need to do is send me an export from your library management system. If you send me a US MARC or MARC21 format file of your library collection, and your reading resources if you want, I will match that to the current quiz list and email you back a spreadsheet detailing the books in your school that matches a current AR Quiz.
You can email me at david.linke@edalliance.com.au
April has seen us release 1000+ quizzes into the Australian market. I had originally added the release, then heard that we had one more batch to publish, so here is the 2nd release for the month.
I am getting very excited about this release process, we are really moving ahead in filling the gaps created over the years.
EdAlliance has developed a simple, straight forward no fuss method of implementing Accelerated Reader in your classroom. This two hour seminar introduces you to the basic concepts of Accelerated Reader and together we develop an Action Plan for immediate implementation in your classroom.
The concepts we address are:
Once a school has the basics in place with their Accelerated Reader Implementation it is time to think about the use of the data to truly motivate your readers.
This two hour seminar extends the basic concepts of Accelerated Reader from simple reading books, taking quizzes and reviewing TOPS reports into a core part of your reading management system.
The concepts we address are:
At the end of this session teachers across the school will have a detailed action plan on how to extend AR into a reading motivation system. They will have the necessary data to support their professional judgement about students’ reading.
This process of filling in the gaps is series that I flagged a few months ago is really producing some great material.
This month we have released 700+ quizzes. There are such great series represented here:
Lots of good things happening with quizzes this month and over the next few months to.
A heap of great authors and some exciting new books released this month.
The highlights of the authors might be:
| Author |
| Abela, Deborah |
| Aiken, Joan |
| Bradman, Tony |
| Brown, Dan |
| Dahl, Roald |
| Deary, Terry |
| Dhami, Narinder |
| d’Lacey, Chris |
| Gaiman, Neil |
| Hawes, Alison |
| Horowitz, Anthony |
| Meadows, Daisy |
| Meyer, Stephenie |
| Muchamore, Robert |
| Powling, Chris |
| Rowling, J.K. |
| Sparkes, Ali |
| Waddell, Martin |
| Zucker, Jonny |
You will see some new books from Anthony Horowitz, the completion of the Twilight Series and the Daisy Meadows books.
A long time ago I wrote this short eBook on using AR to motivate students to read. The eBook is bascially a collection of the celebrations I have seen in schools over the years of training on the use of AR.
The ideas in the book are all based on the use of AR points to motivate students. Remembering that AR points are a unit of measure and nothing more. The higher the points for a book the the longer that book. By setting each student in your class an AR Points Target you can really focus on increasing the Quantity of each student’s Reading Practice. The ideas in the book are focussed on the % of a students target that they achieve, thus allowing all students in the class to compete equally regardless of their reading level or capability.
I hope you can use some of these to motivate the students reading practice in your classroom.
The process that I highlighed last month of filling in the gaps that have been created over the years has started. This month we have relase 300+ quizzes, as the first installment of our planned Term 1 2010 relase of thousands of quizzes.
I can’t really pick the highlights in this list. So I will let the release speak for its self.
