Elementary classes at Similkameen Elementary Secondary School went on a reading blitz on Friday, February 28, coming up with some impressive reading results.
The school is the only one in District 53 that uses Accelerated Reader software from Renaissance Learning, an American based educational software company.
AR encourages “substantial differentiated reading practice,” based on each student’s independent reading level, and helps teachers set personalized goals for each student.The program helps guide students to books difficult enough to keep them challenged, but not so difficult to cause frustration.
In addition, AR helps teachers monitor students’ vocabulary growth, literacy skills development, and other reading skills.
Part of the program also involves students taking an AR quiz in order to assess the student’s level of comphrehension, offering more than 150,000 quizzes of five types on both fiction and nonfiction titles.
Friday’s reading day was based on a Renaissance Learning initiatve, the goal being to have readers in the program meet five million quizzes in one day.
It wasn’t until after SESS registered for the initiative that instructor Rick Johnson found out that Canadian schools could not contribute to the testing totals.
“It meant we weren’t eligible for any prizes,” he said, “but in the end they fell shy of their goal, with a total of 4,987, 949.
“Guess they should have included us Canadians.”
Classes from SESS participated throughout the day in varying degrees in the program, with students submitting a total of 800 quizzes, (passing 769), for an 86 per cent comprehension level.
“We had 130 students read 4. 5 million words on Friday,” said grade seven teacher Rick Johnson. “Some of the students who hadn’t yet done a quiz did four or five on that day alone.”
An extra level of competitiveness was added with each student’s successful test resulting in points for their house league team. Points awarded to each student were related to the size and difficulty of the work being read by the student.
Johnson said the exercise appeared to have really boosted student’s appetites for reading, noting that even normally reluctant readers were “totally jazzed” by the event.
“While it was disappointing to hear that our totals might not contribute to the overall event, our own event was positive and will definitely be something we consider doing again .
“The Accelerated Reader is part of our reading program. It gives students a wider range of choice in what they read, without sacrificing accountability,” Johnson said.