Accelerated Reader (AR) Program
The Accelerated Reader is a curriculum-based assessment tool that provides a summary and analysis of results to enable teachers to monitor both the quantity and quality of reading practice engaged in by their students. Students administer comprehension tests voluntarily themselves, and the system is intended specifically to have strong formative effects on subsequent learning.
A student who uses the program selects a book from the more than 25,000 titles on the AR list. Each book is assigned a point value based on the number of words it contains and its reading difficulty, as derived from a formula based on the Flesch-Kincaid readability index that considers the number of syllables in words and sentence complexity.
After reading, the student goes to the computer and takes a multiple-choice comprehension test on the book's content. Tests may have 5, 10, or 20 items, depending on the length and difficulty of the book. The computer scores the test, awards the student points based on the results, and keeps a complete record. For a book valued at 10 AR points, such as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, a student would receive 10 points for a score of 100 percent, 9 points for 90 percent, and so on. However, the student must score at least 60 percent on the test to earn any points at all.
As students test on more books, the AR system enables close monitoring of general levels of reading performance. The software provides the teacher with an automatically updated analysis of scores for individuals or whole classes; details include average percentage of correctly answered questions, difficulty of books read, points earned, and other diagnostic information. Computer-generated ""at-risk reports"" enable the teacher to guide each student's reading practice for maximum effectiveness.
- Adopted from http://www.readingonline.org.
|
