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Getting Started with Accelerated Reader

Add your students, teachers, courses, and classes

You can do this by importing the information or adding it. For more information, see Setting Up Renaissance Place.

Get Student User Names and Passwords

Students will need to know their user names and passwords so that they can log in to take quizzes and see their progress. Follow these steps to get a list:

  1. On the Home page, select Users.
  2. Select View Students.
  3. On the View Students page, search for your students. You can select a class and select Search to see an entire class.
  4. Select the Passwords tab in the search results to see the students' user names and passwords.
  5. If you want to print, select either Print Page or View PDF.

Set Preferences

Accelerated Reader has school, class, and student-level preferences that help you decide how the program should work. You can set monitor password requirements (and the password itself), some passing percentages, and decide whether to use TWI monitoring and book ratings. You can also restrict when students can take quizzes or restrict quizzing by type, book level, or interest level. To see these and other preferences, on the Home page, select Accelerated Reader or Independent Reading (if you have Accelerated Reader 360); then, select Preferences. For more information, see Accelerated Reader Preferences.

Record Books and Goals

There are six class Record Books and Goals that you can access to guide and monitor your students' work. Follow these steps to get to the pages:

  1. On the Home page, select Accelerated Reader (or Independent Reading under Accelerated Reader 360). Then, select Record Books and Goals.
  2. If necessary, use the drop-down lists to choose the school and class that you want to work with.

Set Reading Practice Goals

We recommend that you set four Reading Practice goals individually for your students for each marking period assigned to the class:

  • average percent correct
  • daily reading time
  • total points earned
  • average book level on passed quizzes.

For help choosing goals, see the Goal Setting Best Practices and the Goal-Setting Chart or the Goal-Setting Chart for Lexile® Measures.

To go to the Goals page, go to Record Books and Goals as described above; then, select Reading Practice Goals. On the Edit Reading Practice Goals page, you can set student goals.

If you have Star Reading, your students' Star Reading test scores will be imported into Accelerated Reader automatically, making goal setting easier. See Setting and Editing Reading Practice Goals with Star Reading.

If you don't have Star Reading, see Setting Reading Practice Goals without Star Reading.

Set Certification Goals

Reader certifications are milestones that recognize students' reading achievements. You can set Reading Practice certification goals for your students. Note: If you enable the TWI Monitoring Preference, the program automatically tracks your students' progress toward the goals you set and awards the certifications they achieve. To see and set certification goals, go to the Record Books and Goals page and select Reading Practice Certifications. To set the goals, see Set a Reading Practice Certification Goal for a Student.

View the Available Quizzes

To view information about the quizzes that are available, on the Home page, select Accelerated Reader (or Independent Reading if you have Accelerated Reader 360). Then, select Manage Books and Quizzes.

On the Manage Books and Quizzes page, you can select a quiz type to see the quizzes that are available.

On the page for each quiz type, you can search for quizzes, use filters to narrow the list, and take sample quizzes.

If you are an administrator, you can also select Manage Books and choose to hide some books from students.

Note: You, your students, and parents can also use Accelerated Reader BookFinder (www.arbookfind.com) to see which books have Accelerated Reader quizzes. For more information, see the Accelerated Reader BookFinder help.

Students Take Quizzes

Once you have set preferences and given students their user names and passwords, students are ready to take Accelerated Reader quizzes.

Students log in to the Accelerated Reader software and select Take a Quiz.

Then, they search for a quiz. In the search results, they select Take Quiz. Students answer the questions and see their results after the quiz. For step-by-step instructions, see Taking an Accelerated Reader Quiz.

Note: Students can also take a quiz using a NEO 2.

Viewing Student Progress

Students can view their progress in Accelerated Reader, including their progress toward goals and a bookshelf of the books they have read.

Students and parents can also view their progress and their bookshelf in Renaissance Home Connect. For more information, see Renaissance Home Connect and Accelerated Reader.

Teachers can see student quiz scores in the Record Books for Reading Practice Quizzes, Literacy Skills Quizzes, Other Reading Quizzes, and Vocabulary Practice Quizzes. (See "Record Books and Goals" above.) They can also see scores in the Reading Dashboard in the Track Student Work and Review Student Results views.

Reports are also available to teachers and administrators. To find them, on the Home page, select Accelerated Reader or Independent Reader (if you have Accelerated Reader 360). Then, select a report category and report name. Reports are PDF files, so you will need a browser or program that can open PDF files (such as Adobe Reader). For more information, see Accelerated Reader Reports.