AR Motivation Ideas – Vol 1

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.

Motivation Ideas – Vol 1 Jan 08- LR

Writing Teacher Made Quizzes

There may be times when you just can’t wait for a quiz to be written by us, or the book you want quizzed is specialist to your school needs.  You may also want to consider having students write quizzes as an extension exercise.  With AR you can write your own quizzes called Teacher made quizzes.

Teacher made quizzes are Reading Practice Quizzes that teachers, librarians or other staff members add to Accelerated Reader.  The software allows the creation of 500 teacher made Reading Practice Quizzes per school.  The quiz numbers 900–1399 are reserved for these quizzes.

As preparation for creating a quiz, read several books written at the same readability level as the book for which you plan to write a quiz. Then take the matching Accelerated Reader Reading Practice Quizzes.

When writing a quiz think about these points:

• the book’s important events
• ask questions in a sequence that matches the events in the book
• write clear questions and answers
• make sure the incorrect answers are plausible and do not give away the correct answer easily
• use vocabulary that is about the same level of difficulty as the book
• ask other teachers to give the quiz a trial before releasing it for student use

You need to do a bit of research before writing your quiz:

1. book level
2. word count

To help determine the book level and word count, search for the book details on www.Amazon.com, you might just find the exact ATOS level and the number of words in the book.   The AR software will automatically calculate the number of points a quiz is worth based on the word count and book level.

You will need to decide how long your quiz will be.  It can be 5, 10 or 20 questions long.  Consider book level and length when deciding how many questions to include.

Creating the Actual Quiz:

1. Log into your AR Site with an account that has the privileges to Manage Quizzes, this is typically the AR Coordinator, Librarian or Administrator
2. Select the Manage Quizzes link from the Accelerated Reader Tab
3. Select Reading Practice
4. Select View All Teacher Made Quizzes
5. Select Add Teacher Made Quiz
6. Enter the details of your book
7. Write your quiz
8. Remember to select the check box at the end that allows students to take the actual quiz

Tips – Writing Teacher Made Quizzes

Buy Quizzes

There are three quiz stores for Accelerated Reader in the world.  You need to make sure you are using the Australian and New Zealand store.  If you follow the link below you will need to specify the country that you want.

Click through here to access the AR Quiz Store

Request Presentation

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 hands on and not lectures, teachers will be expected to work during the session.

Request Information

To receive additional information or a quote please complete this form

Suggest Titles

The constant challenge with Accelerated Reader is finding the right books to complete quizzes on.

You are in the best position to know what students are reading and therefore the most appropriate books for quizzes.

Managing the AR Classroom

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:

• The basic definitions used in AR – Book Level, Points, Interest Level, Reading Range
• STAR Reading Tests – How to administer, how to interpret the data generated
• Developing an Effective Classroom Monitoring System
• Using the TOPS Report Effectively
• Reviewing the Diagnostic Report Data
• Intervening for Student Success

Primary School Ideas

This is a test post of this sub-category stuff

Implementing AR

This page contains all the details of our implementation resources