Jenny Angelo Director of Professional Development and Instruction

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Accelerated Reader and

STAR 360 Report Instructions

Also go to:

for ideas on effective implementation and to access a Dropbox of shared AR resources for all grade levels.

Jenny Angelo –Director of Professional Development and Instruction

Jeff Farley – Coordinator of Special Programs

The Basics of Logging In

On a district computer, go to Internet Explorer. Type net/ar in the address line at the top and hit Enter.

Do NOT type net/ar in Google or click the search magnifying glass at the end of the address bar. It will bring you to a server other than BISD's (for example, Laredo's server) which looks identical to ours other than the server number. On many occasions, teachers and students will claim their log in "isn't working," but 99% of the time it is because they are logging in on a home page that looks just like ours.

For some reason, typing net/ar in Chrome does not work on our district computers.

Alternate method:

Here is the direct address for our district server to get to the AR/STAR log in:

See that number at the end of the address line? (234989) That number is only for the BISD Renaissance Learning server. If there is a different number showing in the address bar, then you have accessed the server of another district, and your log in information will not work.

Suggestion: Type it in once on your computer at home and save as a Favorite.

At any time if you find yourself locked out of your account because you can't remember your password, there should be someone on campus who oversees this program (such as a CC, librarian, lead reading teacher), and they can easily unlock you.

My user name is: ______

My password is: ______

STAR 360 -- What is it??

STAR 360 is a set of nationally norm-referenced screening tools for reading, math, and early literacy.

We are requiring three universal screens throughout the school year in reading and math. The dates for the 2016 – 2017 school year are as follows:

• Beginning of Year: Sept. 12 - 23
• Mid-Year: Nov. 28 – Dec. 9
• End-of-Year: April 3 - 14

Ideally, the universal screening window should be no longer than two weeks in length, meaning that all district students would screen in reading and math, grades 1 - 8 within that window. This allows us to have an excellent collection point of data which can be easily compared to prior and current year screens.

With STAR 360, you can also progress monitor identified students. The recommendation would be to progress monitor all Tier III students every three weeks and Tier II students every nine weeks. However, you are welcome to monitor them more frequently.

What does STAR 360 have to do with Accelerated Reader?

STAR 360 ties in seamlessly to Accelerated Reader to give you guidance in setting student reading goals. Using the screening data, along with the information put in by the teacher (the grading period dates and the number of minutes of required daily reading), an individualized reading goal for each student will be generated as a guideline to begin conferencing one-on-one with students.

It is important that students have ownership in the goal-setting process. This should occur within on-going student conferences to review progress toward goals, adjust goals if needed, provide guidance to students, and as an opportunity to discuss student reading challenges and successes.

ZPD - Zone of Proximal Development This is the range at which a student will be most successful reading independently.

The screening assessment determines a student’s reading level against nationally norm-referenced data and places the student in one of four categories:

At/Above Benchmark (reading at or above 40th percentile)

On Watch – close to grade level but not yet there – below 40th percentile)

Intervention – (below 25th percentile)

Urgent Intervention (below 10th percentile)

Accelerated Reader (AR 360) -- What is it??

AR 360 is the computerized book quiz program that our district has been using for years. Our goal is to implement this program with fidelity on each campus as it has been proven to increase student reading engagement and positively impact reading levels if it is implemented correctly.

AR 360 includes an additional component -- an instructional library of informational texts. Teachers can assign informational text articles to students. The students can then access the articles on a computer, tablet, or iPad. Activities are embedded within each article where students are able to respond to prompts in a text box using text evidence, highlight key concepts, and take a short quiz over the text information. This is a terrific addition to a reading or ELA classroom and would also be a great tool for tutorial sessions.

Checking STAR 360 Screening Results

1. Sign in to the Renaissance Learning dashboard.

2. To check on the STAR Reading screen results, click on the blue Reading Assessments square.

3. Click on Reports and then Screening. Click on the Grade Level.

4. Select the screening window from the drop down menu.

5. Click all the colored boxes as well as the Not Tested box so they each have check marks.

6. Click View Report. This will show you many things --

• You will see a colored graph showing where the students in that grade level placed on the screener. This is important to monitor throughout the year. We want the red and yellow areas to continually diminish as instruction occurs throughout the year. If reading instruction is effective, you will see this occur gradually with each universal screen (for example, when comparing the Sept. screen to the Dec. screen).
• You will then see the list of students in that grade level who are placed in Urgent Intervention, Intervention, On Watch, and At/Above Benchmark based on the screen. You will use this data, as well as other pieces of data such as prior year STAAR scores and other screening results, to implement the Response to Intervention process with the identified students.
• You will see a list at the end of the report showing how many students have not been tested in this grading period. This is important to know as it will impact the integrity of your data. ALL students who have a sight vocabulary of at least 100 words should be tested with STAR Reading so their progress can be monitored. Those students who are considered non-readers would need to select the Early Literacy assessment as their screen. You would then need to ensure that these students are tested within the testing window.

Accelerated Reader Reports and Tracking Tools

Setting and Checking Point Goals

*Remember, you must first administer the STAR Universal Screen in order to accurately generate individualized, attainable goals for each student.

This is where you will be able to input goals at the beginning of each nine week and modify a student's goal if needed.

1. Click on the orange Accelerated Reader square on your AR teacher home page.

2. Click on Records Books and Goals. Choose the class period and then Reading Practice Goals.

If you are inputting goals for the first time in a nine weeks, do the following:

• Choose a Marking Period – go to the Select Marking Period link, select the current nine weeks, then Save
• Select the Average % Goal (85%)
• Select the Minutes of Daily Reading – for example 25 minutes --- you can adjust this for individual students; selecting 20 min. would decrease the goal slightly.
• Click - Update all students
• Review the report generated at the bottom which shows –
• Suggested ZPD (zone where they can read comfortably; you may allow students to go above or below this zone at your discretion)
• We want them to strive to get 85% or better on quizzes
• Under Points, you will see a Goal column – this is where you begin the conference/negotiation with your student. AR is telling us that based on the STAR assessment, this is what they should be able to earn comfortably in a grading period if they read 25 minutes per day.

For example, at a middle school campus, the standard “homework reading” might be to complete 100 min. of outside reading every week – can be broken up to best fit the student. That would equal 4 days of reading, 25 min. per day. Add to that the two in-class SSR reading sessions they would get on Tues/Thurs which is two more 25 min. sessions = total of 6 days @ 25 min. per day = 150 min. of potential reading time. Reading level gains will not be seen unless campuses, students, and teachers commit to making reading a priority.

3. Once you conference with your student at either the end of a grading period or the beginning of one, you write down the agreed-upon goal on their reading log and adjust the points goal into the Goal column then Save. Many teachers have found that printing out the goal page before conferencing with students is helpful. It gives you the student names and suggested goals for that class, and you can then write on it, make goal adjustments, etc. for each in the class. When done, you would go through the goal setting page and input/update goals all at one time for the grading period.

Student Record

This report will show you everything that the student has read this year (or any other year). You will be able to see the book title, book level, the score the student made on each quiz and how many points earned.

This report is great for verifying the book titles read and points earned in a grading period and is one to print when having parent conferences so the parent can see exactly when and what was tested over.

1. Click on the orange Independent Reading square on your AR teacher home page.

2. Click on Reports and then Reading Practice. Click on Student Record.

Within this report, there are several things you can do. First of all UNcheck everything but English Reading Practice Quizzes in the Quiz Type section (most teachers don't use any of the other activities; if you do, then only check the ones you want to have on the report).

3. Next, pick the data parameters for your report. You can make the report start in 2014 or whatever year you choose in order to see what the student has read over the last few years. You can set the date range for just a certain nine weeks or for a week ago; it just depends on what info you need. For progress report time, for example, you would set the date range as the first day of the current nine weeks and the Friday that ends the progress report grading period -- pull that record, and you can see what the student has accomplished in that time period.

4. Select the class period you wish to view, or allow it to show you all class periods at one time.

To generate a Student Record for a particular nine weeks, go to the Report Period section and click on the drop-down menu. Choose a nine weeks and then click View Report to see it.

Diagnostic Reading Practice

*You must first enable and set student goals for the grading period before this will be a useful report.

This is the report to use when you want to see how many points a student has earned, how close they are to their Point Goal progress, and their quiz average grade. You will generate this report to find the grades to input into the grade book.

Parents check the gradebook online frequently to see what the current AR grade is for their child, so it is important to update that information regularly (many campuses have a guideline to update at the end of the 2nd week of the grading period and then weekly after that). DO NOT wait to input AR grades until the end of the grading period as this doesn't give the student time to rectify the problem if he/she has not been reading.

For example: Your campus has a policy that students are required to read ____ minutes per week or per night at home. If three weeks has gone by and the child has earned no AR points yet, that is evidence of NO outside reading; therefore, no homework is being done (the exception is for a highly proficient reader with a long book that would take more than three weeks to finish). This should be indicated in the AR grades so parents can see that this task is not being accomplished.

1. Click on the orange Accelerated Reader square on your AR teacher home page.

2. Click on Reports and then Reading Practice. Click on Diagnostic - Reading Practice.

3. Select a class period in the Select Students section. Click on the dates for the report. To generate grades for a current grading period, select that grading period from the drop down menu. This is important, or it will not accurately show the goals and progress toward them.

*If a student takes quizzes in two different classes, for example in a regular Reading class and a Dyslexia class, checking the box next to Use Only Quizzes for a Specific Class will ONLY show you the quizzes that students have taken under your name for your class. If you leave this unchecked, it will show you ALL the quizzes the students have taken in your class or in any Reading Improvement/Dyslexia class they may be taking.

How do I give grades for this? (Be sure to follow your campus policies for using grades with Accelerated Reader. What follows is a suggestion that could be adapted as a campus policy.)

Create a separate AR column in your gradebook and weight it according to district guidelines. These will be forthcoming within the first few weeks of school.

Within that category, make two separate columns. One is labeled Quiz Passing % and the other is labeled Point Goal %. You will use these two grades to determine the AR grade.

To get the Diagnostic Report that shows the results of your class progress (passing percentage, points earned, and % earned toward goal) so you can input these numbers:

• Go to the Reports section for Accelerated Reader
• Click on Reading Practice, and then Diagnostic – Reading Practice Report.
• Choose a class and a date range, then View Report

This report will show you their progress toward the goals. At the end of the nine weeks, you can then use the percentages provided instantly in the report to generate the two AR grades (Passing % of tests taken, % of Point Goal reached)

If you are just checking the Point Goals for the current nine weeks that have already been set:

Click on the orange Accelerated Reader square on your AR teacher home page.

Click on Records Books and Goals. Choose the class period and then Reading Practice Goals.

You can right click on the page, click on print, and it will print the information. Once you have the point goals in, it is suggested that you print them out and then use this when conferencing with the students. You can write in any new goals that you have negotiated for them, and at the end of the day, you can input those new goals on this screen and click Save.

Other STAR 360 Screening Info and Reports

STAR 360 Terms to Know

Universal Screening– A normed assessment in reading or math that is administered to every child on a campus in order to create a picture of how all students are performing in comparison with their peers. A Universal Screen typically occurs three times per year.

Progress Monitoring – A reading or math assessment used periodically (every two weeks, for example) to track students’ progress in response to research-based interventions.

Screening Window - A set period of time, typically two weeks long, that is standard across the district. ALL district students are screened in reading and math within this window.

ZPD - Zone of Proximal Development This is the range at which a student will be most successful reading independently.

The screening assessment determines a student’s reading level against nationally norm-referenced data and places the student in one of four categories:

At/Above Benchmark (reading at or above 40th percentile) – designated in green

On Watch – close to grade level but not yet there – below 40th percentile) – designated in blue

Intervention – (below 25th percentile) – designated in yellow

Urgent Intervention (below 10th percentile) – designated in red

Goal Line – A line drawn on a graph to indicate where you want the student to be as a result of an intervention.

Trend Line – Line that is generated from the student assessment data to show where the student actually is and where he or she is going. This is based on four or more data points in the same school year.

Percentile Rank - Indicates the percentage of students nationally who obtained a scaled score equal to or lower than the score of a particular student. PRs are norm-referenced scores and range from 1–99. A student with a PR of 75 performed as well as or better than 75% of same-grade students nationwide.