Maltings Library and Accelerated Learning

The objectives of the National Curriculum will be best supported in those schools and academies which have a broad, balanced and up-to-date provision of library books and resource materials.

— DES 1989.

Aims

We aim to:

• Support the curriculum by providing resources in all media at all levels of age and ability.
• Provide students with the necessary information skills to successfully utilise these resources.
• Promote the enjoyment of books, fiction and non-fiction.
• Provide a pragmatic and successful use of Information and Communication Technology.

Accelerated Learning

Accelerated Reader Advantage (AR) is a reading practice component used at Maltings Academy as part of the reading curriculum; it is combined with a daily progress-monitoring assessment tool and the STAR Reading program to allow staff to instantly assess students reading levels, reading ages and national curriculum levels in reading as well as measuring growth.

At Maltings Academy using Accelerated Reader, teachers create a customised reading program to meet the needs of every individual student.

Using information generated by the software, teachers and librarians can help students select books that are difficult enough to keep them challenged, but not too difficult to cause frustration.

In addition, Accelerated Reader helps monitor student's vocabulary growth, literacy skills development and reading skills taught through basal readers and other reading textbooks.

The Accelerated Reader program is very simple to use, the student reads a book of their choice from the academy library, for which is there is an Accelerated Reader quiz (now over 14,326 to choose from!). Once the student has read the book, they take a quick computer-based quiz. The quizzes are fun and encourage motivation and enjoyment. The program automatically prints out a report showing how well the students has performed, providing instant feedback for both students and teachers.

The teacher and/or librarian has an opportunity to guide the students reading by using the reports and ensuring that the child achieves success and is therefore motivated to read another book - for fun!

Benefits of Accelerated Reader

• Give students the in-class guided independent reading practice needed to become successful readers.
• Inspire the love of reading in all students, including reluctant readers.
• Enhance the joy of teaching and love of learning.
• Build student's self-confidence and develop self-directed learners.
• Guide students to read books at their appropriate level to maximise growth.
• Improve student's critical-thinking skills.
• Boost student's performance in all academic areas.
• Improve student's attendance and reduce discipline problems.