St. John students are expected to read books outside of their required classroom assignments, understanding that reading is a skill that needs practice. To assist in that expectation, St. John offers Renaissance Learning’s Accelerated Reader (AR) as part of its Language Arts curriculum. Accelerated Reader is a web-based individualized reading program in which students are encouraged to select books at their reading and interest level and then take a five, ten, or twenty question quiz to test their reading comprehension.

Renaissance Learning offers over 100,000 titles from which a student may choose. Each book is assigned points based on the average sentence length, average word length, word difficulty level, and total number of words. Students are awarded a number of points based on their passing percentage. Teachers set point goals for each student, and in the middle school, these points contribute 20% of the student’s literature grade.

Students at St. John are introduced to Accelerated Reader beginning in first grade, and continue on through the eighth grade.  For more information on this program, visit their website at www.renlearn.com/ar/.