Schools Excel at Reading Program
By Crystal Bonvillian, Montgomery Advertiser, Ala.
May 13–Teachers and parents in Montgomery County are having to plead less with their children these days to pick up a book instead of a video game controller.
Sandy Harrell, 10, describes pleading with her father to allow her to read “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
The catch: She wanted to read it in Home Depot.
“I begged him, ‘Dad, please let me take my book,’ ” said Sandy, a Forest Avenue Academic Magnet School fourth-grader. “Finally, he said ‘OK.’ ” Harrell is just one of scores of Montgomery area students who have jumped on the Accelerated Reader band wagon. The program, created by Renaissance Learning Inc., has brought about a reading, well, Renaissance, in the schools that use it.
Accelerated Reader, a program designed to help strengthen a student’s reading comprehension, has been used in the school system for well over a decade, said Mike Lenhart, assistant superintendent in the Office of Teaching and Learning. It has only been in the past four years that it has become a staple in the classroom, however.
“It was only then that we decided to make it a real support piece to the curriculum,” Lenhart said. “Research shows that kids can learn skills in the classroom, but it takes volumes of reading for them to become true readers.”
The program is not mandatory, but all 58 schools in the district are participating. And the efforts have paid off.
As of the end of April, MPS had 11 schools that were named Model Schools, with Model Classrooms in an additional 14 schools.
Eight of the Model Schools had gone on to earn the title of Master School. Another nine had Master Classrooms. To earn the title of Model Classroom, the majority of students in that room must maintain an average of 85 percent or higher on their quizzes for at least 12 weeks. Students who achieve that feat for 18 weeks are named a Master Classroom.
To be a Model or Master School, the entire school must fulfill the same requirements.
“There are 64,000 AR learning sites across the country,” Lenhart said. “Less than 100 make master.”
The program is simple. A student reads a book and then takes a computer-based quiz on what he’s read. AR computer software grades the quiz and the teacher gets immediate feedback on how the student is comprehending what he reads.
Diagnostic reports help each teacher keep tabs on how the students are faring on the quizzes, which, depending on how many books the student reads, can number more than 100 per school year.
Renaissance has more than 100,000 quizzes based on literature for different age groups. The schools purchase the quizzes from the company.
Denise Nelson, a first-grade teacher at Garrett Elementary School, said one great thing about Accelerated Reader is that it allows a teacher to set a student’s goals according to his reading level. A student with a learning disability or for whom English is a second language would have lower goals than a student whose comprehension is higher.
Nelson said the children, who are rewarded for their achievements with pizza parties, trophies and other goodies, see the competition as good motivation.
“The little things motivate them,” Nelson said. “Some teachers have a bell that they ring when a student gets five out of five right on a quiz. Some have charts where the student can write his name when he makes his goal.”
The motivation works, Nelson said.
“We have to tell them, ‘Put up your book,’ ” she said. “They try to sneak it under their desks or at the lunch table.”
Sandy and other students praised the Accelerated Reader program.
“Reading’s fun and it broadens my imagination,” Sandy said. “And with AR, you have a goal to shoot for.”
Dominic Olivera, a fellow fourth-grader at Forest Avenue, said the program also ensures that he understands what he reads.
“Sometimes, you read too fast, but AR has comprehension tests,” Dominic, 8, said. “There’s no point reading a book if you don’t understand what you’re reading.”
Jinyong Jeong, 8, said the honors given to the students help motivate him.
“It fuels me to read on when I get tired of reading,” he said.
The second-grader said reading is one of his favorite pastimes.
“I like it because it’s peaceful when you read,” he said.
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