Alachua County "Best Practices" for AR 1. If reading levels are placed on the books they should be inside the front cover, not on the spine. Reading levels on the outside may cause embarrassment to readers or cause them not to check out the book most appropriate for them. 2. An AR reading list with levels indicated should be available in the media center and online. (See directions for posting AR lists.) 3. Accelerated Reader should not drive the selection process. (Refer to the county selection policy and your school's selection policy.) Books should be selected on the basis of quality, using reviews in sources such as Booklist, School Library Journal, The Book Report and other similar publications. Schools should have AR do custom disks based on the books you have in your collection. 4. It is expected that AR books will be arranged according to standard Dewey order as all other books are.  Accelerated Reader books should be interfiled with other books and marked in some way to indicate that they are AR.  In no case is it acceptable for AR books to be separated out and arranged by AR level. (See Florida DOE policy.) 5. Students should be encouraged to select from all books, not just AR books. 6. Teachers should be discouraged from basing reading grades entirely on AR points. 7. If teachers proscribe the levels students can check out they should be encouraged to assign a range of levels, (3.5 - 4.2) rather than a specific level, (3.7).  (See the new Renaissance Learning, AR goal setting chart.) 8. If any part of the reading grade is based on AR points there should be some provision for students to choose non AR books and receive credit the same way that they would receive credit for an AR book. 9. AR or RC should be controlled and administered by a team which should include teachers, the media specialist and administration. The media specialist can not and should not be asked to do everything. Interpreting AR and RC information in Horizon records pdf file Return to Table of Contents