[LM_NET] HIT: Accelerated Reader Alternatives

[Jane Lofton <janeloftonlibrarian@GMAIL.COM>]

Dear LM_NET friends,

Thanks to all of you who responded to my question about Accelerated  
Reader alternatives. I am including the three responses below. I also  
found a report written by L. Alicia Monroe at 
http://students.ou.edu/M/L.A.Monroe-1/artifact_EveningScore.pdf 
  that was very helpful. Here are the responses:

Response 1:
When I was observing a classroom for my undergrad in secondary  
education, I observed a DEAR (drop everything and read) session of  
about 15 minutes for a 6th grade social studies teacher's homeroom.   
The last 2-3 minutes was used for entering information onto journal  
worksheets with information about author, title, # pages read, and  
summary of what was read.  The students did this during DEAR, and they  
also had a set amount of time outside of school for reading as well (#  
minutes per week) during which they also filled in the journal  
worksheet.  For outside of school, a witness initialed next to that  
line (parent/guardian/older sibling) that the student actually read.   
This worksheet looked like someone had created it with Word as a table  
so it looked like a chart.  I didn't ask the teacher what he did with  
those worksheets for accountability.  This was approximately 2003.

Response #2:

As I understand your problem, you are looking for inexpensive ways to  
track kids reading, right?  I do not use AR.  I think it is a great  
program, but happen to work in a place where motivation is not a big  
problem.

  I recently conducted a very successful Battle of the Books program  
with 5th graders.  When they read a battle book, they filled out a one  
page fact sheet that included TITLE, AUTHOR, SUMMARY, PROBLEM,  
SOLUTION etc.  I can e-mail you the sheet I created when I go into set  
up my library tomorrow.  In addition to the summary sheet (which was  
really just for their own reference), they each had to participate in  
an ongoing blog that featured a series of questions related to the  
battle titles.

How about setting up a reading blog? You can give each kid a safe blog  
i.d (that you and the teachers can keep track of), you can create a  
very simple reading form (that includes similar fields as those on my  
battle form) that can prove  1) they are reading, 2) they are reading  
age appropriate material 3) they comprehend certain aspects of the  
text well enough to participate in a blog.  They are often so excited  
about blogging and being part of a web 2.0 experience, some kids may  
not even realize the blog is an evaluation tool. Bonus!

If your OPAC has a web-based option, your teachers can go on it as  
they are looking at the blog and confirm the reading level of many or  
most of the titles your kids are reading.

Response #3:

I worked in a public library and wish to offer my perspective on AR.   
The kids, ESPECIALLY the middle school kid,s love AR because it is so  
easy to get around.  They were forever coming in to the library to  
consult the AR point book and then would go DIRECTLY over to the  
movies section.  Not interested in tests without a movie. They would  
tell me that teachers never check that they have read the book- just  
relied on the test.

Teachers are really kidding themselves if they don’t know  that the a  
significant number of kids are getting around reading these books.


with best wishes,

Jane Lofton
Teacher Librarian now preparing to carry the message in the classroom
Lindero Canyon Middle School
Agoura Hills, CA
janeloftonlibrarian@gmail.com or jane@lofton.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law.
  You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings
  by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book.
To change your LM_NET status, you send a message to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu
In the message write EITHER:
1) SIGNOFF LM_NET
2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL
3) SET LM_NET MAIL
4) SET LM_NET DIGEST

 * LM_NET Help & Information: http://lmnet.wordpress.com/
 * LM_NET Archive: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/archive/
 * EL-Announce with LM_NET Select: http://lm-net.info/join.html
 * LM_NET Supporters: http://lmnet.wordpress.com/category/links/el-announce/

--------------------------------------------------------------------