175 YEARS AND STILL GROWING!

September 2012

Our Accelerated Reader Program here at Hemmeter will be taking a new direction this year. Rather than setting point value goals for 5 goal periods throughout the year, students will have a goal of number of books read based on their grade level. Students will be required to read a variety of genres within their book goal. For example, 3 of their required books may have to be fantasy novels. In this way, students will get exposure to a variety of genres and not be worried about the points they are accumulating. Most classrooms will continue to take AR tests. However, students will be tracking their reading in a reading log as well as providing a response to their reading in this log. Core Common Standards emphasize a deep understanding of the text, including interpreting words and finding theme. While the AR tests do show comprehension at a recall level, we wish to promote a richer understanding of the texts.

Rather than trinkets as rewards, there will be whole group celebrations of our reading progress. For our kick-off, each classroom will have a guest reader from the community to read a special story to the class. We are looking into having visiting authors come to Hemmeter as well as engaging assemblies. The BIGGEST reward is the love of reading the students will gain as they read their way through their school year.