100 Book Challenge^® for Middle School

Teacher Resource Kit

The Teacher Resource Kit provides teachers with the tools they will need to get started with 100 Book Challenge®.

Includes

• Teacher Handbook
• Conference Notebook
• IRLA
• Leveling Guidelines
• Step-by-Step Guide to Readers’ Workshop
• On-Target Badge
• Set of Laminated Skills Cards on a Ring
• Classroom Poster
• Leveling Poster

100 Book Challenge® Teacher Handbook

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.

100 Book Challenge® Conference Notebook

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.

IRLA: Independent Reading Level Assessment®

American Reading Company’s IRLA provides core national standards for reading proficiency, grades PreK–12. 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 students have chosen to read because they want to read them.

Students need to know where they stand in relation to grade-level expectations. The IRLA will help teachers show students where they are, where they should be, and what skills and behaviors lie in between. Through regular conferences, teachers and students outline and track a course of correction, acceleration, or maintenance for each student and his or her family.

Leveling Guidelines

Keyed to national standards and high-stakes tests, ARC’s leveling system integrates all reading materials and assessment tools into one simple, color-coded system that students, teachers, and parents can understand.

This 32-page bound full-color booklet provides the characteristics of readers and text at each level. This information will help teachers learn how to level books and readers. Knowing how to level books and readers is fundamental to knowing how to help individual readers with widely varying strengths and roadblocks.

Our kid-friendly leveling system ensures that students are reading the “right books” to maximize their daily practice and progress. Using colors makes it easy for students to remember their levels and find the books that they can read and want to read. All books receive a colored sticker on the spine.

Step-by-Step Guide to Readers’ Workshop

100 Book Challenge^® Readers’ Workshop can be the center of your literacy curriculum, or it can be the “teach for transfer” piece of your existing basal program. Either way, 100 Book Challenge workshops ensure that students not only learn how to read proficiently, but learn to be avid readers.

The Readers’ Workshop interconnects demonstration and direct instruction with independent practice and assessment. This 25-page book provides a step-by-step guide for implementing a successful 100 Book Challenge Readers’ Workshop.

On-Target Badge

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.

Skills Cards on a Ring

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.

Leveling Poster

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.

Classroom Poster

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.

Varsity Reading Skills Cards

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.

KidPace 3

Kidpace 3 enables teachers to manage 100 Book Challenge progress—with ease and accuracy. Teachers can track reading progress, analyze results, identify struggling readers, and celebrate successes. KidPace requires teachers to spend just ten minutes per marketing period to update progress for their classrooms, and KidPace does the rest.

Varsity Reading Logbook

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

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.

Incentive Kits

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.

Drawstring Bags

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

Incentive Reading Folders

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.

Incentive Reading Folders

Additional incentive folders up to 1,000 Steps are available à la carte.

Varsity Classroom Libraries

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.

Professional Development

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

Varsity Reading Skills Cards

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.

Drawstring Bags

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

Incentive Reading Folders

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.

Incentive Reading Folders

Additional incentive folders up to 1,000 Steps are available à la carte.

Milestone Awards

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.

Incentive Kits

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.

Varsity Reading Logbook

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.

5 Baskets/100 Titles

Master educators hand-select only the best trade and reading company multicultural titles to include in the Benchmark libraries. 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.