Summer School Express

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.

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.

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.

Summer School 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.

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.

Professional Development

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

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.

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.

Geography Map Cards

Students literally hold the world in their hands with the World Geography Skills Card. One side presents a small world map with all the essential geography terms every student needs: the names of the continents, oceans, directions, etc. The reverse side has a larger, blank world map that students use to quiz each other, helping them attain mastery of basic geography.

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

Blackline Masters for Student Research

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

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.

Project Blank Books

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

Professional Development

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

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.