What is Accelerated Reader?

• Accelerated Reader (AR) is a computer based program that helps motivate students to read more and to read to understand.
• Students choose books at their reading level to practice reading. Books are color coded in the school library to help students find their level.
• Books from the public library and from your own collection at home can be read! To find out if a book is an AR book, you can look online at AR Bookfinder.
• After your child has read a book several times, they will take a quiz on the computer at school. Quizzes will have from 5 to 10 questions. After they finish the quiz, the computer shows them their results as well as the questions they answered incorrectly, followed by the correct answer.
• Students pass a quiz when they score 60%+ on a 5 question quiz or 70%+ on a10 question quiz.
• Parents can sign up for email notification of their child's AR quiz results. Home Connect also allows families to see graphs of their child's progress and their child's 'bookshelf.'. Home Connect letters with student log in information are sent home at the beginning of the school year. Please contact your child's teacher or librarian, Mrs. Jackson if you have misplaced this information.

What can I, as a parent, do to help?

• Probably the single MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do is to listen to your child read their AR book to you! Beginning readers should be reading their AR book several times before taking an AR quiz. As you listen, ask questions such as:
  • "Who are the characters in the story?"
  • "What happens first, second and last in the story?"
  • "What did you like best about the story?"
  • "Was there anything you didn't understand?"
  • "What was the story mainly about?"
  You don't need to ask every question for every book. Just use your judgment and encourage them to talk about the book with you!
• Send AR books to school every day so they can have their book during classroom and library AR reading time.
• Click here for Building Successful Readers: Strategies for Parents.