As a library media specialist with provisional certification, I will be blogging about my learning and library activities at the school where I am employed, Oglethorpe Charter School (OCS), here on my Practicum Blog.
Today, I, along with the reading teachers, the 'skills for adolescents' teacher and our director of instruction, decided on our Read Across America activity for this year. Since Dr. Seuss is an author more generally suited for an elementary school setting, it is sometimes difficult to find activities appropriate for middle school students. However, since Accelerated Reader is a large component of our reading program, we decided to be a part of the "Read the Most from Coast to Coast" challenge sponsored by Renaissance Learning which will take place on Dr. Seuss's birthday, March 2, 2012. The challenge is to break the national one-day record for taking Accelerated Reader Quizzes. The current record is 2,177,586 quizzes in one day which was set last year on Dr. Seuss's birthday. Although it is still in the planning stages, we discussed having refreshments and prizes for students participating in the challenge. We are hoping the students will be excited about participating and can feel they are part of a national initiative.
Our reading program at OCS is unique to our district. We are the only middle school in Chatham County that divides the Language Arts cirriculum into two components. Every sixth, seventh and eighth grader takes a LA class which focuses on writing, grammar and usage and a LA enrichment class which focuses on reading and literature components. In the Reading class, students are required to read 30 minutes each day in class, read a certain number of books each quarter, and also take a certain number of Accelerated Reader quizzes and/or earn a minimum number of AR points. This has proven quite effective, as our 6th graders scored 97% meeeting or exceeding, our 7th graders scored 98% meeting or exceeding, and our 8th grade students scored 100% meeting or exceeding in Reading on the CRCT in 2011.
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