Renaissance Learning:
Accelerated Reader Overview
Accelerated Reader is a guided reading intervention used to supplement regular reading instruction in K–12 classrooms. Its aim is to improve students’ reading skills through reading practice and quizzes on the books students read. The Accelerated Reader program calls for students to select and read a book and then take a computerized quiz based on the book’s content and vocabulary. The computer software then provides teachers with information on the students’ performance on the quiz, which allows teachers to monitor student progress and identify students who may need more reading assistance.
Accelerated Reader serves as the practice component of a comprehensive reading program by promoting personalized practice combined with data to monitor and manage that practice. The program encourages substantial differentiated reading practice to create strong readers. Based on each student’s independent reading level, AR helps teachers set personalized goals for each student, and guide students to books difficult enough to keep them challenged, but not so difficult to cause frustration.
With AR, teachers can:
- Motivate students for learning. Self-selected reading at students’ independent reading     levels results in success, which spurs enthusiasm, higher attendance, fewer discipline problems, and better attitudes. Students will be motivated to read constantly.
- Receive reliable, objective information. The data cover reading comprehension of fiction and nonfiction reading, vocabulary development, literacy skills development, and more.
- Prepare students for college and career. Students engage in substantial amounts of reading practice and receive immediate feedback. As a result, scores improve on state tests and more students master standards—research proves it.
- Keep all students challenged. Students are guided to books where the level of difficulty is neither too hard nor too easy—the level at which optimal learning takes place.