Accelerated Reader in Australia» Support

2011 – November Release

David Linke — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:29:25 +0000

After a little break last month the Quiz Writers have started off with a small 130-odd quizzes released this month.

I had a quick look down the list and noticed a couple of Christmas type books.

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2011 – October Release

David Linke — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:23:37 +0000

Due to holidays and a change of systems we didn’t release any quizzes into the Australian market in October this year.

The normal production schedule will resume in November

2011 – September Release

David Linke — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:52:13 +0000

This month sees us release 139 quizzes into the Australian market.

As I was looking down the list of quizzes released these things just popped into my head:

Even more quizzes on Daisy Meadows books – how can there be any more of these fairy books to quiz
Even more quizzes on Adam Blade books – this has to be getting to the end of this Beast Quest series

A series that stood out for me in the list was the Oliver Moon series.

You can download the list here –

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2011 – August Release

David Linke — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 03:52:00 +0000

The month of August sees more than 400 quizzes released.

You can download the PDF of the list here

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Teachers as Theory Builders

David Linke — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 01:28:12 +0000

Back in 2003 Dr Lyn Wilkinson from Flinders University presented a keynote address at an education conference in South Australia. Her keynote, Teachers as Theory Builders, appeared to me an academic storytelling exercise. The story was underpinned by the things we expect from academics; research, interviews and conclusions. The end result was a great description of how Accelerated Reader is simply a tool that teachers can use with great effect once they have applied the theory that they inherently possess.

This article makes for great reading. Since that keynote the article has appear in a few academic journals, but this is the version that I personally prefer.

Teachers as Theory Builders

2011 – June and July Release

David Linke — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:54:18 +0000

The releases for June and July reflect our move from filling gaps in the collections to a focus on recent books. I hope to keep this focus going over the remainder of 2011 and into 2012. The latest quiz releases have been updated on the AR Advantage sites and into the Desktop Quiz Store.

The combined June and July releases included 700+ new quizzes in the Australian AR system now.

You can download the PDF’s here:

AU Quiz Release – 2011 06

AU Quiz Release – 2011 07

2011 – May Release

David Linke — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:05:58 +0000

The Quiz Writers have been very busy throughout May this year, this month sees more than 400 quizzes released.

The biggest news, for me anyway, is that Diary of a Whimpy Kid – The Ugly Truth has finally been released as a quiz. Can you let all those students who have been emailing me each month that this quiz is now available. It is always exciting to hear from students, and even more exciting when I can deliver on the requests.

The other big highlights are the additions to the Artemis Fowl, Young Samurai and Alex Rider Series…

AU Quiz Release – 2011 05

Expression of Interest – Term 3 AR Reading Challenge

David Linke — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:34:46 +0000

In late 2010, Alex Rayner from Lord Lawson of Beamish school in the UK contacted me with the general idea of setting up a collaboration between his school and one in Australia. By absolute chance that very day the Australian cricket team was announced for the upcoming Ashes series between England and Australia.

So I got to thinking, here we have an English school wanting to collaborate with an Australian school, the Ashes are about to be played in the upcoming Australian summer… So the AR Ashes were born!

The next step was to find an Australian school that wanted to play in the AR Ashes. Seeing this was the very first time we had constructed such a competition I needed to keep the competition pretty small and decided to invite only a few schools to play so that it didn’t become too big!

I sent off a few invites hoping that I might find one school to play. Well, every school that I contacted decided that it was a great idea and we ended up with 6 schools playing in the AR Ashes.

The competition was very simple:

Each school created as many teams of students they liked – some used classes some used smaller groupings
Each student completed a STAR Reading test to determine their current Reading Age
Each student was assigned an AR Points Target based on 20 minutes of daily reading over 6 weeks from the standard AR Points Target Chart
All the individual AR Points Targets were added together to form a team s
The AR Points each team accumulated were then used to calculate a percentage of target
The team with the highest percentage of target was the winner

We awarded prizes for the following categories:

All members of the winning team received a $15 iTunes voucher
The individual student with the highest personal percentage of target received a $100 iTunes voucher

You can view all the details here – www.ARReadingChallenge.com.au

Here is some feedback from the schools that played:

“Gave our normal program a different focus and added interest and motivation”

“The classes involved were highly motivated and excited about reading which was great to see”

“Our students were very disappointed when the competition ended.”

I have a plan to run an Australia and New Zealand competition in Term 3 this year. If you want to play or more details complete the form below:

2011 – April Quiz Release

David Linke — Tue, 03 May 2011 23:41:31 +0000

Our quiz writers have focused on filling some gaps in collections, this might be a series or an author’s collection, so these 280+ Reading Practice quizzes might be a little older than we normally release. But I think filling in the gaps is a really useful idea – I hope you do too.

AU Quiz Release – 2011 04

We also continued our release of Vocabulary Practice Quizzes this month, with another 200+ VP quizzes released into the Australian market. This latest Vocabulary Practice quiz release takes us over the 800 quizzes in this exciting new category.

AU Quiz Release – 2011 04 – VP

Just a reminder that all the VP quizzes already have an RP quiz on the system

2011 – March Release

David Linke — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:59:34 +0000

This month our quiz writers have split their efforts between the standard Reading Practice Quizzes and the new Vocabulary Practice Quizzes. We released in total 500+ quizzes this month. Now before I get 100+ emails, the latest book in the Diary of a Whimpy Kid series is coming in April.

This is the Reading Practice Quiz list:

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The Vocabulary Practice Quizzes are here:

AU Quiz Release – 2011 03 – VP

Just a reminder that all the VP quizzes already have an RP quiz on the system