Explorer Express

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.

Reading Skills Cards

Identify what a student needs to know and be able to do at each reading level

Written in student and parent friendly language, the Reading Skills Cards travel between school and home daily providing guidelines for teachers, parents and students as to the skills and strategies (standards) that must be mastered at each level. Comprehension questions are keyed to the higher order thinking skills required by high stakes tests.

100 Book Challenge Smart Start modules include 250–340 cards reflecting the reading levels of your students.

100 and 200 Step Medals

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.

Folders for first 200 Steps

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.

This modules includes folders to take 15 students to 200 Steps. Additional incentive folders up to 1,000 Steps are available à la carte.

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.

Professional Development

Module includes one full day of Professional Development instruction for up to 20 participants with purchase of 5 or more classroom modules. This comprehensive, interactive, hands-on introduction to Explorer Express will provide all participants with the tools and the understanding to successfully implement the program. Master teachers and principals lead all secessions. Teachers always leave this day excited and confident. Instructional webinars are available for purchases of 4 modules, for less.

Teacher Pacing Guide

Teacher Pacing Guide offers a detailed nine-week plan for completion of a full thematic inquiry project using a reading and writing workshop model. In addition to highlighting key concepts and essential components, the guide supplies a schedule for daily activities. It also provides a rubric for student grading and makes project expectations clear for teachers, students, and parents.

Blackline Masters for Student Research

Blackline masters provide graphic organizers to teach and scaffold students’ note-making, research reading, and writing skills.

Project Blank Books

Students independently draft, revise, edit, illustrate, and publish a book demonstrating what they have learned on their topic.

Theme Related Folders

Theme Folders are decorated, heavy-stock folders that allow students to keep their books, log sheets, Skills Cards, and research notes together, making transport easy between home and school.

Writing Cards

Writing cards support students through each step of the writing process: drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Each card details the steps students need to take to successfully complete one stage of the full writing process (e.g., drafting) before proceeding to the next step (e.g., revising).

Writing Cards

• Drafting
• Revising
• Editing
• Publishing

Professional Development

Module includes one full day of Professional Development instruction for up to 20 participants with purchase of 5 or more classroom modules. This comprehensive, interactive, hands-on introduction to Explorer Express will provide all participants with the tools and the understanding to successfully implement the program. Master teachers and principals lead all secessions. Teachers always leave this day excited and confident. Instructional webinars are available for purchases of 4 modules, for less.

5 Theme Baskets/100 Titles

75,000 titles from more than 200 publishers have been reviewed by our team of content-area specialists and librarians to create each of our leveled theme baskets. Our collections provide single copies of hundreds of books focusing on a specific science, social studies, or language arts theme.

High-interest, low-readability titles allow students to engage in standards-based content-area learning, even if they are not yet reading on grade level. Above-level titles give advanced students the challenge they need. You select the basket levels appropriate for student reading levels in your classrooms.