Adding Teacher-Made Quizzes – Accelerated Reader

At times, you may want to add your own Reading Practice Quiz for a book, perhaps because no quiz is available. To do this, follow the steps below.

Who can do this with standard permissions?

District Administrators, District Staff, School Level Administrators, School Staff, Teachers

On the Home page, select Manage Content.
On the Manage Content page, first check the selected school at the top of the page. If you have access to more than one school, and this is not the school that you want to add the quiz for, select the school name. Then, select a school in the window that opens and select Apply.
Under Accelerated Reader 360, select Create a Book Quiz.
In the new window that opens, first enter information about the book and quiz:

Enter the book's title and author. (For the author, enter the first name, then the last name.)
Enter the word count. If you are not sure how many words are in the book, and you cannot find the word count in the publisher's information or on the web, estimate the word count.
Enter the ATOS level for the book.

If you are not sure of the level, and you have some or all of the text of the book in an electronic file, you can use the ATOS Analyzer on the Renaissance website.

Go to http://www.renaissance.com/products/practice/accelerated-reader-360/atos-and-text-complexity/. Scroll to the bottom of the page and choose either Analyze an excerpt (if you have a portion of the book) or Analyze a book (if you have the full text of the book). Note that if you use an excerpt, you need to enter the book's word count.

On the page that opens, read the information, and be sure to select the Instructions link for more specific information. You can then upload a .doc, .docx, or .txt file and select Submit. The calculated ATOS level will be shown.

Once you have entered the word count and ATOS level, the points for the book will be calculated automatically.

The ISBN is not required, but you can enter it if the information is helpful to you; the number is not shown in Accelerated Reader.
Select whether the book is fiction or nonfiction.
Choose the interest level for the book. The interest level indicates which grade levels the book's content is most appropriate for. LG indicates grades K-3, MG indicates grades 4-8, MG+ indicates grades 6 and up, and UG indicates grades 9-12. You can choose "Unknown," but defining an interest level can help teachers and students find books; interest levels can also be useful if you decide to restrict books based on interest level.
Choose whether the quiz and book are in English or Spanish.
Next, select Download Book Quiz Template under Step 2. You will download a Microsoft Word form file (in .docx format) that you can fill in to add the quiz.

The options that you see when you click the Download link depend on your browser and operating system. On Windows computers, in many cases the file can be seen at the bottom of the browser window as it is downloaded, and you can click the file name there to open it; if not, the file is put in the Downloads folder (or opened in Microsoft Word if you have chosen to do that). On Macintosh computers, the file is either placed on the Desktop or in the Downloads folder; the browser may give you the option to open it.

Open the file. Make sure that you are using a version of Microsoft Word that supports .docx format. You may need to select Enable Editing at the top of the window to begin working in the file.

Microsoft Word 2007 or above is required to create Accelerated Reader Teacher-Made Quizzes. Note that Microsoft Word Online is not compatible.

In the file, you will see that you can enter up to 10 multiple-choice questions for the Reading Practice Quiz. You can enter fewer than 10 questions if you wish because Accelerated Reader will only use the questions that you fill in to create the quiz; leave the questions that you do not use as is.

The Passing Percent preference determines the passing score for the quiz; see the setting for quizzes with 10 or fewer questions.

For each question, you will enter the question, the correct answer, and at least one incorrect answer (you can enter up to three). Keep in mind that answer choices are shuffled - they won't necessarily appear in the order in which you enter them. (The questions, however, will be in the order in which you enter them.) Be sure to delete the text that is already in each field.
the question and answer fields for each question

We suggest that you become familiar with similar quizzes first. Read several books written at the same level as the book for which you plan to write the quiz; then, take the Reading Practice Quizzes.

As you write the quiz questions, keep these guidelines in mind:

Consider the book's important events.
Ask about the events in the order in which they happen in the book.
Write clear questions and answers, and make sure the answer choices are plausible.
Since answer choices are shuffled, do not use answer choices such as "all of the above" or "none of the above."
Use vocabulary that is at the same level of difficulty as the book.
Have other teachers give the quiz a trial run based on the Word template.
Check your questions, correct answers, and incorrect answers carefully before you upload the file. You cannot edit or delete Teacher-Made Quizzes after you finish creating them, although the district administrator or school administrator can choose to hide quizzes from students (when the administrator manages books).

When you are done, save the Microsoft Word file, using a name that will make it easy to identify the quiz file.

Once you have created the quiz file, you can share it with teachers at other Accelerated Reader schools who want to use your quiz. Those teachers will still need to follow these steps to upload the file and enter the book information.

If you no longer are on the Add Content page when you finish writing the quiz, go back to the Home page and choose Add Content again and choose to create a book quiz.

There are two ways to upload your quiz file:

You can drag the file from the folder on your computer into the dashed box in the Create a Book Quiz window.
You can select click to browse your computer and select the file.

After you upload the file, you can select Delete if you need to delete the file and upload a different one. You can only upload one file per quiz.
the Delete link for an uploaded file

Check the information once more to make sure it is correct; book and quiz information cannot be changed once you create a quiz. When you're ready, select Create a Book Quiz at the bottom of the window.

You may occasionally see one of these errors:

At least one question must be entered in the template. This means that you have not filled in all of the required fields for at least one question (the question, the correct answer, and at least one incorrect answer).
There is at least one incomplete item in the template. This means that one or more of the questions isn't finished. Each must have the question, the correct answer, and at least one incorrect answer.
An unsupported character was found. Check the file for unusual or unintended characters; then, save it and upload it again.

When you see one of these errors, correct the problem in the quiz file and upload the file again.

The quiz will be saved. When the process is done, you will see a message to tell you that the quiz was imported successfully. Select OK. You will go back to the Add Content page.

Once you have finished creating the quiz, you can view it where you see Reading Practice Quizzes after about 5 to 10 minutes. For more information, see Viewing Teacher-Made Quiz Information.

New Teacher-Made Quizzes are assigned numbers in the 400000 range (starting with 400001 at each school and continuing from there). Older Teacher-Made Quizzes that are already on your site may have numbers from 900 to 1399.

District and school administrators can hide Teacher-Made Quizzes that you decide not to let students take just as they would hide any book. See Managing Books.