Welcome to the St Vincent’s School Library.
Our library is situated in a beautiful top floor space in the Convent building. Four year ago we embraced the opportunity to explore various reading management systems. Following research and English Departmental meetings we decided to work with the Star Reading (SR) and Accelerated Reading (AR) programmes from Renaissance Learning.
STAR Reading is a computer-adaptive assessment for reading and literacy that incorporates empirically-validated learning progressions. It gives us accurate baseline data with reference to where our students are in terms of their literacy and where they need to progress to in terms of their reading practice, literacy and vocabulary skills. We opted to incorporate this new system into our school self-evaluation within the literacy framework plan and to that end we will concentrate this work with the 1st to 3rd Year groups. We plan to expand the programme through the whole school in the future but for the senior Year groups presently have much reading and research material for education as well as pleasure.
Having reorganised the library into new sections that support the AR reading programme we are delighted to invite the students to read within their Zone of proximate Development (ZPD) which they are allocated after their Star Reading assessment. The ZPD suggests the readability-level range from which a student should be selecting books for optimal growth reading without frustration.
At the moment we are busy selecting books to populate our new library and with your daughter’s book choices in mind, we are satisfied that our selection order will be valuable and supportive to the growth of every students’ ZPD.
When a student completes a book she takes an AR quiz. The quiz focusses on her reading practice, her vocabulary skills or her literacy skills. Every book in the AR system has an accompanying quiz and the results of the quiz support literacy improvement and a solid reading culture that is at the heart of all learning.
If you would like to know more about Renaissance learning please visit the following website: http://www.renaissance.com/products/accelerated-reader. We also suggest that you can go to http://www.arbookfind.co.uk/ to explore the ZPD of existing books being read by your daughter/s. This will also help you suggest books and help your daughter choose titles within her ZPD as well as her interest level.
This is the beginning of an exciting library and literacy programme here at St Vincent’s. We look forward to the continued celebration and promotion of a positive reading culture which lies at the heart of all education.
The Accelerated Reader programme in our library aims to develop a culture of powerful reading practice while at the same time providing us with evidence of each girls reading achievements.
Many of these students have read over a million words and are therefore AR millionaires! Others have read the most words in their class. This is a wonderful achievement and we are delighted to see how our students especially our 1st and 2nd year students are using the library to enhance their literacy and learning skills. These students receive an award from AR as well their certificate of achievement.
Star Testing
