Cook Magnet School Earns Reading Honor

COLUMBUS, Miss. (Press Release) — Cook Elementary Fine Arts Magnet School has earned national recognition for outstanding performance in advancing reading practice and proficiency across multiple grade levels.

Cook was awarded Accelerated Reader Model School Certification by Renaissance Learning, a Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., based company.

Model School Certification acknowledges that Cook’s efforts to promote personalized reading practice, assess comprehension, and monitor progress have resulted in measurable improvements in reading proficiency.

Accelerated Reader Model School Certification demonstrates that a majority of the school’s students have met or exceeded goals for reading practice and comprehension. After reading fiction and non-fiction books at the appropriate level, students take quizzes to assess their comprehension. Accelerated Reader provides immediate feedback to help teachers facilitate reading level growth.

“The faculty and staff at Cook collaborated to make reading a school focus,” said Dr. Tim Wilcox, principal at Cook, “and I am so proud of what we have achieved together. We’ve created a culture of reading with rigor, and we expect that to improve learning in every area of our curriculum.”

This is the school’s first year reaching Accelerated Reader Model School Certification and the school has a goal to achieve additional certifications this year.

Accelerated Reader, the world’s leading reading software program, enables teachers to personalize reading practice and monitor comprehension to optimize growth. Today’s real-time version provides access to more than 150,000 quizzes, more than half of which are for non-fiction books. This vast collection of quizzes provides opportunities for students to read and comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity from early grades through graduation.