Students from Years 3 – 6 at Matthew Flinders Anglican College in Buderim have proudly reached their collective goal to read 100 million words this year as part of Flinders’ Accelerated Reader Program.
Head of Primary School Trudi Edwards said the students had surpassed their goal at 106,772,106 words read … and counting!
That adds up to 3290 books read and recorded since February across the three year levels.
Along the way, the Flinders Primary School celebrates each student’s personal achievement as they read 1 million words by hosting a Millionaire’s Morning Tea.
“Daily reading is essential in order to develop fluency, comprehension and what we refer to as reading endurance, which is the ability to maintain comprehension over increasingly longer texts,” Trudi said.
“As a school strongly committed to evidence-informed instruction, we have embraced the Accelerated Reader Program after our review of research indicates that it can improve student reading achievement significantly,” she said.
“The aim is to make personalised learning for each student engaging, enriching and accessible.”
The AR Program forms part of Flinders’ wider commitment to strong literacy development in the primary school years with many activities and programs to support reading and boost learning.
“A wonderful example of our commitment to promoting and celebrating reading is our College’s recent ‘Read for Change’ charity fundraiser,” Trudi said.
“In just seven days, 250 of our Primary School students read hundreds of books and raised over $14,000 in donations,” she said.
“These funds will help support two children that Flinders’ Primary School sponsors through World Vision as well as our local SunnyKids charity, and also fund student art initiatives within our College.
“Challenges such as this further promote reading and assist students in reaching their AR goals.”
The AR Program enables students to choose from a vast number of books in the library which are suited to their current level of reading development.
The books vary in length, difficulty and text type and, upon completing a book, students complete quizzes which monitor their comprehension.
“The aim is to challenge students to set reading goals, work hard towards attaining them, and to read outside of their comfort levels and beyond their favoured genres or authors,” Trudi said.
“Our students see the AR Program as a positive, goal-based activity to challenge and motivate them to devour books consistently and to regard themselves as confident readers with a thirst for knowledge.”
For more information about Matthew Flinders Anglican College, please visit www.mfac.edu.au.
