100 Book Challenge Varsity is designed to accelerate achievement for middle school students with reading levels, 1st through 12th grades. With our standards-based leveling system, advanced students are never bored by the pace, while remedial students receive the support they need to catch up. The Varsity Smart Start module includes all books, educator tools, and student materials to create, support and promote a reading culture in middle school classrooms.
See the Suggested Spectrum of Baskets for examples of classroom libraries by grade.
Learn about American Reading Company’s standards-based Leveling System.
Have questions about 100 Book Challenge? Read our FAQ.
For up to 30 students, 5 classroom minimum
The Teacher Resource Kit provides teachers with the tools they will need to get started with 100 Book Challenge®.

The Teacher Handbook is a vital and comprehensive resource for any teacher using 100 Book Challenge. The handbook provides blackline masters, instructions for implementation of every aspect of the program, tips for addressing common concerns, detailed descriptions of the book leveling system, and materials to encourage parent participation. Spanish translations of many of the materials for students and parents are also included.

The Conference Notebook is the heart of the 100 Book Challenge standards-based formative assessment system. The teacher maintains a standards-based assessment/coaching guide appropriate to that student’s current level of reading proficiency. Teachers learn to assess, diagnose, and instruct each student using a standards-based formative assessment framework while the student reads books he or she has chosen and wants to read.
Student progress is monitored, coached, and documented as they increase their mastery of the reading standards required by state testing. All instruction is differentiated to match individual student needs and interests. Teachers learn to be diagnosticians, expert coaches, and reading friends to their students. The Conference Notebook supports both student and teacher learning through daily classroom practice.

A unified standard-based framework for student assessment, text leveling, curriculum, and instruction. The IRLA includes every Common Core State Standard for Reading, both in literature and informational text, as well as those Language standards which are key to reading success.
The IRLA allows educators to determine a student’s current level of reading proficiency, diagnose areas of strength and weakness, formulate an Action Plan for next steps, and track progress on a daily basis using books the student has chosen to read because he or she wants to read them.

Have the entire range of 100 Book Challenge Skill Cards at your fingertips! This set includes all 100 Book Challenge Skill Cards making it easy to locate the skills necessary at any reading level. The set is laminated and collated onto a ring for quick reference.

Each 15 minutes of reading practice counts as one Step. Students are expected to read for 11 Steps a week, for a minimum of 400 Steps (100 hours) per year. Teachers, administrators, and office staff, wear the weekly target number of Reading Steps around their necks. This simple gesture makes it clear that every student in the school is expected to do enough reading practice every day to get good at it. It is soon very clear which students in the school are not getting enough reading practice in time to do something about it.

ARC’s standards-based color leveling system organizes all of your leveling tools into one simple standards-based gradient that students, teachers, and parents can understand and use. The leveling poster is a handy reference defining the text characteristics at every color level and providing the correlation to other popular leveling programs.

Teachers can keep track of students’ reading milestones. This 39" × 27" colorful glossy poster has spaces for the teacher to write in the students’ names and the dates on which they reached reading milestones—from 100–600 Steps.

Tailored to the needs of students at each level of reading acquisition and color-coded to the leveling system, 100 Book Challenge Reading Skills Cards help teachers and students identify a student’s level and teach the appropriate reading strategies for that level. The Skill Cards make explicit what each student must practice in order to move on to the next level. Comprehension questions are keyed to the higher order thinking skills required by high-stakes tests. A set of 250 to 340 skill cards are included in module. Quantities vary based on reading levels required.




SchoolPace is a web-based student achievement dashboard that allows educators to monitor growth and performance in real-time. With SchoolPace, you’ll have out-of-the-box access to reports including:

Each 100 Book Challenge student receives a log book to track his or her reading progress recording each Step (15 minutes of reading) completed for each marking period. By the time the log book is complete, each student will have reached 50 hours of reading. Students enter the title, date, number of pages read, and reading level, and a parent, coach, or teacher sign each entry. Reading practice should take place for 30 minutes at school and 30 minutes at home.

Milestone Awards are presented to students by the school principal in recognition of effort-based achievements in reading. Each gold medal has the 100 Book Challenge logo on one side and the reading milestone on the other. Colorful ribbons represent which milestone the reader has reached.

Rewards for Readers Who Achieve
Research shows that extrinsic rewards help students sustain behavior that is initially challenging but with experience becomes intrinsically rewarding. Your avid readers don’t need the prizes, but students not used to reading at home every night on their own do. The Smart Start Module includes a package of small incentives to get all of your readers started on lots of reading every day.

Book bags are ideal for students to transport all their 100 Book Challenge materials to and from school and any other reading location.

100 Book Challenge Reading Folders keep your students organized for Independent Reading. Everything they need for reading practice travels with them throughout the day and goes home each night. Students start with the basic Blue folder. As each reader completes 100 Steps of reading, he or she is awarded a new 100-Step Red folder. Students who have not completed the requisite amount of reading practice continue with the aging Blue folders. Teachers and volunteers can see at a glance who needs extra reading practice time. The color folders provide a Karate Belt system for monitoring and rewarding student effort.
100 Book Challenge Smart Start modules include folders to take 30 students to 100, 200, 300, and 400 Steps. Additional incentive folders up to 1,000 Steps are available à la carte.

Varsity libraries combine multicultural books from all genres, on all manner of topics in fiction and nonfiction, selected to appeal to middle school students. Collections are balanced to include fiction (including best selling series) and nonfiction across multiple genres and come leveled, organized, and ready to read. Each classroom receives ten baskets (30 books each), totaling 300 unique titles, and each classroom’s set is different. The baskets circulate among participating classrooms creating a continuous stream of up to 15,000 titles moving through participating classrooms. Varsity collections at reading levels K–5 contain easy books selected to appeal to older readers who need books of high interest but low reading level.

FREE Professional Development with the purchase of five or more classroom modules (or webinar with 4 modules or fewer.)
