Accelerated reader

[GreatScroller]

Hello!

my daughter has struggled academically at school for some time. She is the youngest in the year and did start school during Covid so I believe they may contribute a little. Socially she is absolutely fine and loves school.

Recently the school has introduced an accelerated reader programme and her book she had brought home a few months ago was 2.8 and today she brought home a 1.9. Recently I had thought she had become more fluent in her reading (if she can focus) and she answers questions okay. I had asked for a meeting with the teacher as they had said they weren’t sure about my daughter as sometimes she can read fine and they are surprised and other times she can’t. She is very behind in her maths apparently but two weeks ago they said they were not too concerned about her reading and writing. Should I be concerned her reading level is lower?

I feel like this is quite a low reading level considering she will move to year 4 in September and the school aren’t really giving me any signal that they are concerned at the same time saying she falls below the ‘expected standard’.

I just wanted some advice or if anyone has similar children!

Thanks

Hi, I’m not an expert on Accelerated Reader as I’m secondary teacher but I do have 3 primary age children. As I understand it, your child should have done an online comprehension test which will have given them a ZPD - basically a range from which books can be chosen. There’s a table here which shows the correlation between age and ZPD. It does look like your child is a little below expectations, especially as they have dropped her level of difficulty. I would suggest you maybe concentrate on a different reading scheme at home (a one with a specific set of books eg Oxford Reading Tree) and also ask for a meeting with the teacher.

My DS (Y2) is on accelerated reader, he started on 2.0 in September, and his current book is 3.4. I think they are allowed to pick books from slightly above or below their number, so it's possible she just really liked the look of that book, instead of been told she had to have a lower level one.

The program focuses on comprehension not fluency or decoding, as they should be competent at that before they start the program. They answer questions on a tablet at the end of each book and the program automatically sets the level based on the scores. (If they get over 70% three time, they go up 0.1).

This means that she might be progressing really well with fluency and expression, but this isn't really being reflected if she's not as good at the questions. Or in contrast, you could have other kids who are maybe less fluent, but with a really good memory for the plot, who move up deceptively fast (ds probably falls into this category)

Thank you! She always looks for shorter books as she can read and remember better that way! So perhaps she did just pick it up as she was interested in it. Thanks for your explanations!

I used AR for about 6 years in my last school. It seemed that they could go up and down whenever they took a test. At times I’d get them to re-do if a few days later (it auto generates, so it’s not the same test each time) as just being a bit hungry, a PE lesson outside or not being engaged with the text could alter the result a lot!

The books should be chosen within a range, the range is smaller at the lower end of the scale, it’s huge higher up. We found that some books have an unexpected level (Mr Men are often higher than you’d expect), possibly linked to the questions asked at the end of the book.

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