Guest Post: Celebrating reading progress with Roald Dahl party
21 July, 2017
Mayfield School in Portsmouth is a mixed all-through school for pupils from nursery age through to Year 11. They have approximately 1350 pupils on roll and use Renaissance Accelerated Reader with pupils in Year 7 and 8, as well as those needing extra reading support. Assistant Librarian, Carol Groom, tells us about their recent Accelerated Reader celebration party.
Guest Post: From little acorns... mighty readers grow
17 July, 2017
“As any primary teacher will know, the transition from Year 2 to Year 3 is always a tricky one. Not only do we have to prepare teacher assessments by relying on our best judgement, the children are also suddenly faced with lots of new concepts and much higher expectations in terms of progress. Now, for maths and writing it’s very easy to objectively gauge where they are in their development. Reading is a completely different ball game."
Guest Post: Incentivising reading with bookworms and golden tickets!
10 July, 2017
St George's CE School, based in Kent, have been using Renaissance Accelerated Reader to implement a range of creative reading celebrations. Gillian Charlton, Librarian, outlines the school's approach.
Lazy Summer?
28 June, 2017
In the last few weeks of the academic year, the prospect of a relaxing summer break probably feels quite distant - with the need to analyse data, draw up reports and devise assessment plans. Renaissance however, is here to help...
We've now quizzed 30,000 books on Accelerated Reader!
9 May, 2017
We are always growing the number of quizzes available to customers on an ever-expanding variety of titles. These 30,000 books quizzed for Renaissance Accelerated Reader™ cover both fiction and non-fiction titles in each of our four interest levels (Lower Years, Middle Years, Middle Years+ and Upper Years). They range from the early picture books such as Fusspot Bill to classics like War and Peace, which is still the longest book on AR.
Guest Post: A new lease of life in the school library
20 April, 2017
Following their implementation of Renaissance Accelerated Reader, Queen Elizabeth Grammar School have seen huge improvements in library use and reading motivation, alongside increased opportunities for collaboration both within the school and across Lancashire.
Creating cross-curricular literacy links using Renaissance Accelerated Reader
23 March, 2017
During my time at Renaissance, I’ve been fortunate to work very closely with the schools on our Renaissance School Partnership Programme. During my visits to these schools, similar questions and concerns emerged; Literacy Coordinators, who were responsible for Renaissance Accelerated Reader, wanted to find ways to embed its success across the curriculum.
Guest Post: Books and Boots at Millisle Primary School
8 March, 2017
Millisle Primary School in Northern Ireland have introduced a new literacy scheme, monitoring reading achievement using Accelerated Reader and rewarding children with football coaching sessions from local team captain Jamie Linfield.
From Apprentice to Master - our year with Accelerated Reader
7 February, 2017
Since introducing Accelerated Reader just over a year ago, Hummersea Primary School in the North East, has been on an exciting journey with developing a reading for pleasure culture and supporting children in their reading development – so much so that they were recently nominated as a Master School. Laurie-Ann Spencer, currently on maternity leave, spearheaded the roll out of Accelerated Reader and was so proud of the school achieving Master status, she wanted to share her personal highlights on making the move from ‘Apprentice’ to ‘Master’…
Don't judge a book by its colour (band)
14 November, 2016
Having taught in primary schools for over 20 years, Julie King has seen her fair share of early reading approaches and an equal share of changes in assessment methods. Based on these experiences, Julie has become a strong advocate for leaving colour bands behind after the current purple or gold bands, when a child is a transitional reader who is able to blend sounds and word parts to read simple words.