222,325,703,048 Words

*How It WorksRenaissance Accelerated Reader is currently used inthousands of UK schools. It was designed to motivatereading for pleasure while giving teachers the tools totrack reading habits, comprehension and progress. Pupilsread books of their individual choice and then take a quizensuring they understand what they have read. In the UKover 31,000 quizzes are currently available and more than150 are developed and added each month. An extremelybroad range of books have been quizzed, both fiction andnon-fiction, including popular books such as the HarryPotter and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, alongside classics suchas Pride and Prejudice and Gulliver’s Travels. In additionto these reading practice quizzes, vocabulary practicequizzes test a child’s understanding of particular words,and literacy skills quizzes analyse 24 different areas ofhigher order thinking skills.Accelerated Reader gives immediate feedback on eachquiz to children and to teachers, and tracks scores,difficulty level and overall comprehension over time. Thisformative feedback gives pupils confidence, and helpsteachers shape reading instruction and offer personalisedguidance.a small sample of text as with other formulae. ATOS canbe applied to all publications. In order to relate the ATOSlevels to the British system, ‘1’ would have to be added tobring the difficulty level up to English, Welsh and NorthernIrish Years and ‘2’ added to bring it up to Scottish P years.The interpretation takes this into account.As demonstration, ATOS was applied to about 30text samples from some common UK publications.Interestingly these common periodicals were not asdifferent in terms of their average readability as mighthave been expected, but the range of readability of itemswithin each one was considerable. An exception was Hellomagazine, which had many text samples within a narrowrange of readability, as if its policy was to constrainreadability deliberately. The Economist had consistentlyhigh readability text. The differences in size of text samplewere also interesting - the Sun had some shorter but alsosome longer pieces while Hello texts were even morevaried.The complexity of any text can be determined by theonline ATOS Analyser at www.renlearn.co.uk/atos.The ATOS FormulaBook difficulty level is determined by the ATOS formula.This is marked on the book, so pupils can make sure thatthey are choosing books that are not too easy or too hard– challenging without causing frustration. ATOS usesfour factors to determine readability: average sentencelength, average word length, word difficulty level andthe total number of words in the book. The entire book isscanned and the formula applied to the whole book - notPublicationReading AgeRange Based on Word CountThe Economist13.612.0 - 15.2500 - 2,000 wordsThe Times12.711.0 - 15.1500 - 800 wordsThe Daily Mail12.09.1 - 14.2450 - 700 wordsThe Sun11.59.7 - 13.3350 - 1,000 wordsHello Magazine11.49.5 - 13.3250 - 2,000 words6

*More About Renaissance Accelerated ReaderAccelerated Reader is a personalised practice and daily progress-monitoring system that helps teachers accuratelyand efficiently monitor pupil progress in quality (comprehension), quantity and difficulty of books read. Introduced in1986, Accelerated Reader has become one of the most popular educational software programs in the world. While theprogramme has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, its basic three-step approach has not changed: First,a pupil reads a book either at school or at home. Next, the pupil takes a computerised quiz of 3, 5, 10, or 20 questionsdepending on the length of the book. Then, the pupil and teacher receive immediate feedback with their results, andcan also access reports detailing books read, number of words read, book reading level and level of comprehension.Currently more than 31,000 books have been quizzed across all styles and genres, so pupils can read and quiz for themajority of the popular books available in their school or public libraries.A Reading Practice Quiz - Accelerated Reader also includes quizzes to assessvocabulary and literacy skills along with voice quizzes for struggling or emergent readers.Accelerated Reader BookFinderRenaissance’s online book-searching tool,Accelerated Reader BookFinder, is publiclyavailable and makes book selection easy.Descriptions are provided for every quizzed book,and can be searched by a number of criteria,including level and genre.www.arbookfind.co.uk7

*Summary of Key FindingsThe report considers the books read and quizzes taken by schoolchildren between August 12016 and July 31 2017.Recommendations for the future seem clear. Pupils should be encouraged to: pass all quizzes, sustain a higher levelof challenge in their reading on transfer to secondary school, and sustain Average Percent Correct at or above the85% level on every book. Teachers should be aware of different pupil reading preferences, and the marked differencesin preferences in secondary fiction and non-fiction between boys and girls. Even high-achieving readers needencouragement to sustain high challenge in their reading, especially in secondary. Struggling readers are seriouslyunder-challenged in secondary, and their level of accuracy is low as well. Boys might profess more interest in non-fictionbut need encouragement to read it carefully. Books popular with children should guide school purchasing decisions,with a greater emphasis on more challenging books in secondary.The take-home messages of this report are thus:The Good News:1. Many more pupils are using Accelerated Reader quizzes – almost a million children participated this past year.2. Pupils steadily read more books each year at the beginning of primary school, peaking at 36 books in Year 3.3. Children consistently read above their chronological age throughout primary school, and non-fiction difficulty hasrisen dramatically.4. For high achieving readers, book difficulty increased in Years 3,4,5,7 and 9.The Less Good News:1.2.3.4.8Book difficulty drops off sharply in Year 7, with secondary students consistently reading behind their chronological age.Secondary-aged boys were reading easier books than last year, but did not improve comprehension.Comprehension was not good among struggling readers – many of the top 20 books were read at below 85% APC.Non-fiction books read in secondary are two years behind chronological ages, and consistently display moremale-dominated themes.

*School Spotlight : Scoil Chríost RíScoil Chríost RíCounty Clare, Republic of IrelandScoil Chríost Rí is a primary school based in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland. The school is one of over 60 schoolsin County Clare using Accelerated Reader, but was one of the first in Ireland to implement the programme,in 2011. Principal Gearóid Roughan describes the school’s reading approach and experiences with theprogramme.In 2010 I completed a Master’s thesis on AcceleratedReader and its effects. The results of the thesis were verypositive – in a class of 24, the majority improved in theirattitudes towards reading, and made improvements incomprehension. Since then, we’ve expanded it into all ourclasses, from second through to sixth.We’ve seen two major changes in literacy during this time:the development of a reading culture, and improvedcomprehension of books across the school. It’scommonplace to see children reading here during lunch, inthe school yard, and carrying books with them always.“Accelerated Reader is an integral part of our literacyprogramme. It’s allowing emergent readers to developfluency, accuracy and rate of reading.”- Conor Healy, Special Education Teacher“Accelerated Reader makes reading more exciting for me”- Oran, 5th Class pupilFor the first 15 minutes of a literacy lesson, children readindependently. Throughout the day, if any child finishes theirwork early in any subject they’re in the habit of taking outtheir book and reading. We’ve found that children read muchmore than they ever have before.Using Renaissance Home Connect, parents can log in, seewhat their child is reading and view their progress. Ourparents feel very positively about Accelerated Reader, andhave noticed their children engaging with reading at homeas well as school.We always thought that children were reading, but never hadthe tools to document it, monitor it or assess it to the levelwe do now. Teachers can now see how many books areread, how many are understood and how difficult they are.It gives us a much better understanding of reading thanwe’ve ever had.9“I feel really proud of myself when Iscore 100% in a quiz.”- Erika, 5th Class pupil

*Reflections on Reading: Tom McLaughlinI’ll let you into a secret, I’m not very good at reading; asmuch as I love stories, the way I consume them can feelfrustrating and disjointed - dyslexia will do that. It’s a bit likespending a couple of days crawling across the hot desertbefore stumbling across a cool lake just to be told you canonly enjoy it one tiny sip at a time.For a long time this put me off, I didn’t feel like words orbooks were for me. I didn’t feel clever enough to belong andas for picking up a book, well that desert looked awfully longand the sun felt awfully hot. But that’s when I discoveredsomething: stories can be just a few sentences long, somebooks don’t need words sometimes, other don’t even havepages.Let me explain, I remember finding poetry for the first timeas a child and it changed my life, firstly it was short, notso much a hike across the Sahara as a stroll along beach.Suddenly I felt like I belonged. I loved that poetry can beanything you like, they can be a joke, they can be an idea,a story, something scary, something that makes you cry.For me it was a way in. A brilliant combination of levity andbrevity, that allowed me a seat at the table. I was hooked!Comic books were next, stories with no words - who knewthat was a thing. It meant I could explore new worldswithout the embarrassment of asking my parents how topronounce different words, or what things meant. You seefor a reluctant reader, all these little moments of anxietyadd up and mean that you can allow yourself to give up. Butonce you’re in, you get time and space to explore stuff onyour own and when you think about it, that’s the best thingabout books, the fact that they allow you to be yourself, togo off the beaten track, to explore the worlds you want toexplore. And if I needed help, a guide into another place,then I had audiobooks, someone else to tell the story, so Ididn’t have to have to worry about the big words.“That’s the best thing about books,the fact that they allow you to beyourself, to go off the beaten track,to explore the worlds you want toexplore.”The point is that all these things are out there, readingpoetry lead to writing poetry, flicking through comic bookslead to draw

How an Accelerated Reader Quiz is Written 27 Reflections on Reading: Alex Wheatle 28 Section Five: Most Read Non-Fiction Books 29-30 Reflections on Reading: Holly Bourne 31 Section Six: Developmental Trends in Fiction/Non-fiction Reading 32 School Spotlight: The Telford Park School and Telford Langley School, England 33 Section Seven: Voting for Favourite Books 34-36 Reflections on Reading .