How to Write an Accelerated Reader Quiz
These instructions are for making an Accelerated Reader Quiz of your own
for a read aloud type of picture book, rather than a chapter book. I am not sure
how the procedure differs when writing a quiz for a chapter book, except that I
read that you only have to type in a portion of the text rather than the entire book.
Since I have no personal experience with creating tests for chapter books, I can
only refer you to the Renaissance Place Website for more information. Sorry!
To begin, select a story book that you would like to write a quiz for, and type
in the entire text of the story. When I do this, I just insert a “return” for each
page break, in addition to any paragraph breaks. Save it as a Simple Text (.txt) or
Word document (.doc). Go to the following website in order to have the text of the
story analyzed:
http://www.renlearn.com/ar/overview/atos/Analyze.aspx?type=1
Click on the box where you are prompted to submit the file for analysis.
Browse for the file, select it, and click “submit.” Wait for a reply (about a minute.)
Here is an example of what you might see:
Analysis type: ATOS for Books
Confirmation #: 82946
Language selected: English
File submitted: Five green and speckled frogs.doc
ATOS Book Level: 1.0
AR Points: 0.5
Word Count: 185
Launch your internet browser and go to Renaissance Place at
https://hosted245.renlearn.com/268300/.
Note; It is my understanding that you MUST log onto Renaissance Place via your
own school district’s website, or you will NEVER have the option to create a
teacher made test! Either that, or your AR account must allow for the creation
of teacher made tests. Our school has 500 extra “slots” for these tests. So if
you don’t see any of the necessary links when you log into the website, you may want
to check with your school administrator and find out if their contract with AR allows for teacher made tests. When I first set out to create an AR test of my own,
I searched and searched for these links on the Renaissance Place website, and
never found any of them to create a test. This is because you have to have the
right account to begin with and be on the correct website, or none of these instructions will do you any good.
© 2011 Heidi Butkus www.heidisongs.com
Click on the Accelerated Reader tab. Log in as a Teacher User rather than a District User. If applicable, make sure that your own school is listed in the pop-up
menu at the top rather than a different one. (My first quiz “landed” in a different
school’s collection of quizzes because I failed to change the school on the pop-up
menu at the top of the page to my own elementary school, since it defaulted to the
school name at the beginning of the alphabet. There was no getting the quiz “back”
and I had to recreate it completely, unfortunately.)
1. Click on Manage Quizzes.
2. Click on Reading Practice.
3. Click on View Teacher Made Quizzes.
4. Click on Add Teacher Made Quiz.
5. Fill in the title, author, word count as it came up on the analysis, the ATOS book
level, , whether it is fiction or nonfiction, the interest level (as in primary or upper
grade, etc.)
6. Enter the “Quiz Status”, as in whether or not the children are allowed to take
the quiz, or whether it is still under development. You can always go in and change
this when you are done.
7. Click on Edit Quiz Questions.
Enter the questions and the answers you want by clicking “edit” and then typing on
each question space. First write the question, and the correct answer. After that,
the alternate answers are the “distractors” (or the wrong answers) that the child
will also pick from. (The computer will randomize the order of the correct answers
each time a child takes the test, so that the correct answer will occur in random
order, and not always be the first one on the list.) Remember that in the future, if
you notice that you have a “bad test question or something worded poorly in an answer that tends to confuse many of the students, you can always go back in and edit
the questions and answers on a test that you created yourself. This is a nice feature to have when your school is really shooting for high comprehension scores on
Accelerated Reader, as mine is.
When you are all done writing the questions, click “Save.” When you are sure that
your test is ready for students to take, you can go back and change the quiz status
to indicate that children are ready to take the quiz. Good luck!
Heidi Butkus
© 2011 Heidi Butkus www.heidisongs.com