October 7, 2013
AR Primary will offer students a simplified, child-friendly interface that makes it easier to find books and quizzes. The aim of this update is for students to be able to better navigate the software on their own and to visually track and comprehend their progress.
The simplified experience gives students illustrative indications of their progress, and makes greater use of images to give visual feedback alongside all the reporting features of the standard student experience.
By default, the AR Primary experience for students in Years 1-4 will include:
- Search Tips: Simplified directions and book sample
- Icons added to the header tabs, quiz options and score results pages.
- Rating pages now have faces on the stars to help students rate the book.
Progress views have also been simplified:
- On all progress tab views, the option to change the marking period has been removed so it will always show progress toward the current marking period targets.
- Simplified text.
Further updates have been made to Reading Practice Progress:
- An engaging animated flower that grows as the student earns more points.
- If set, the flower represents the student’s points target.
- If not set, the flower represents five points.
- A colourful smiley faced sun shines when a student has met the Average Percent Correct target.
- In order to provide a more focused and simplified experience for early readers, we have removed a number of the metrics on the Progress page, including Average ATOS Level, Books Read, Words Read, Percent of fiction and non-fiction.
The software will default to the AR Primary experience for students in nursery to year four. Administrators can elect to change this default setting through a menu option in Renaissance Place. Administrators can find the option to change the student experience for each year as follows:
- Under Accelerated Reader on the Home page, select Preferences.
- Under School Preferences, select Student Experience.
A video introduction to the new primary experience will be available to teachers in Renaissance Place. Teachers will find the video in the Resources to Get Started area, or by clicking See What This Looks Like under the Student Experience settings.
Full details of all the changes can be a found within a Did You Know article within Renaissance Place (RP).