ESL Student Takes the Lead in Accelerated Reader

The South East High School Library holds an accelerated reading contest every year to see who the top reader is of the whole school. Prizes can range from winning a free book along with a free bag of chips to receiving a Best Buy gift card. To receive these prizes, students must read a book that has a label informing them of how many points the book is worth and what reading level it is. Once the student checks out and reads the book, they must go into the library to take an Accelerated Reader test, also known as A.R. If they score 100%, they get the full points that the certain book offers, and if they miss one or more then some points are taken off.

The tests aren’t very difficult if you read the entire material, but it can be challenging to be competing against other students to be the top reader of the entire school.

This year’s top A.R. student has broken a new record at SEHS. No one has ever obtained a huge amount of A.R. points like Rosalie Lopez, a sophomore at SEHS. The most amazing, jaw-dropping thing about that fact is that Lopez is also an ESL student.

“It’s a great thing for her as an ESL student in general. [She] is competing with regular English speaking students in this reading program, and she is winning by a great amount of points,” said Acevedo.

            “I have been reading since I was in the 4th grade, and I was 10 years old,” she said. Lopez has read books such as: I Sat Down and Wept by Lupillo Rivera, the Harry Potter Saga by J.K. Rowling, the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer, and Go Ask Alice by an anonymous author. Her favorite author is Paulo Coelho, who is known for writing the novels Brida, Eleven Minutes, and The Devil and Miss Prym.

             Lopez loves how reading books can take her to another world and teach her new things about different countries. She likes how she steps out of her own shoes for awhile to see a different world from someone else’s point of view.

Reading many novels has also been very beneficial to Lopez. “My vocabulary is improving and I’m learning more about the pronunciation of the words. I’m able to show myself that I can do anything just by reading books,” she stated.

How did Lopez get so far ahead in the game? “I read a book per week. I will read like an hour and a half a day. I’m used to it since it was something I always had to do for homework last semester,” she said. “I see her come in regularly,” said Mr. Acevedo, SEHS Librarian. “She’s always coming in to do schoolwork, but she has come in a lot for reading,” he said.

It may seem that Lopez has no trouble reading even if she is an ESL student. However, she stated that sometimes the vocabulary in books is hard for her to understand. “If there are certain accents or a lot of slang language being used, it’s hard. But I always like to check the dictionary,” she said.

Lopez feels really excited to the top reader at SEHS, especially since she is an ESL student. She feels that if she can do it anyone else can, too. Lopez said, “[For people that don’t like to read] they can find an interesting book to read, and can take themselves beyond the classroom. I have regular classmates that don’t know how to spell correctly, so it’s necessary to read to know how to spell. If [ESL students] follow the criteria, they can always succeed.”