Mumsnet Talk

DS is in year 2 & on gold reading level.

He's fine - bit of a reluctant reader but doing OK. He wants to be on white.

I've asked his teacher what we can do to help at home and she's written that he needs to be 'answering questions at a deeper level'.

I'm sure she's right but I'm not sure what questions I'm supposed to be asking and how 'deep' his answers are supposed to be.



Any advice much appreciated.

Here's a breakdown of the skills required at each level:

www.mewan.net/curriculum/english/getfile.php?src=25/a_guide_to_pregression_in_reading_skills.pdf

learnandsay - that is really interesting thanks for posting that link!
Why does your ds want to be on white OP?

Thanks Learn and Say, that's useful.

He wants to be on white because a couple of his friends are . We worked hard on his reading over the summer holidays and he moved up to Gold at the beginning of September.

I'm trying to instill in him that if he wants to do well he needs to put extra effort in - hence me asking the teacher what else we could be doing.

I don't we've been paying enough attention to comprehension etc at home so will definitely need to look at that.

Do you get books he wants to read from the library? I think mostly it's a case of reading more books and getting more out of them to go up from gold to white to lime to what you like . This is more easily done when reading books you enjoy and get a lot out of so like talking about. It's a bit boring to talk about stuff you are not interested in.... although perhaps good practice to answer one or two questions to check you know what's going on....

I'll be honest - I struggle to get him to discover what he does like to read. We do go to the library and he gets books out but often they then go unread.

He enjoys non-fiction best, and The Magic Tree House stories but everything else is a bit random.

He instinctively shies away from things that I suggest or he thinks I might like, so I have to be quite careful not to push him too much, but still be supportive iyswim.

I see. Have you tried the softly softly approach, just quite low key get some books out of the library at about the right level (maybe some a bit easy, some harder), then just leave in his room. Tell him you've done that but say no more. Have you tried that or similar?

Sorry, you just said he got the books out so I guess that's similar. Maybe read him a few pages or so of one of the books he's got out and see if he likes it and wants to read it? I think if you find some books that he really likes he'll be off- but as pp have said on other threads, some children are just not that into reading which is fine too, so just keep him going on whatever he likes and he'll gradually get more fluent.

I wonder how comprehension works at home though. Because in my view some comprehension strategies don't make much sense. The teacher needs to know whether or not the child fulfils the criteria for changing national curriculum levels but the parent doesn't. So asking questions like:

What do you think the author's aims were?
Can you retell the story from a different point of view?
What do you think the father's motivation was?

..don't really make sense at home. My daughter would just look at me and say what are you talking about? Whereas if a teacher asked her the same questions I'm pretty sure she wouldn't say that to the teacher. (I know she's too young to get asked questions like that.) But when she's old enough I'm pretty sure she will (as she already does) see differences in what you are expected to do at home and what you are expected to do at school.

But you might say "did you enjoy that story, I really liked it when...... which bit did you like the most", and "oh, that's a bit sad, what do you think x character feels about that?" Or... "oh that's a bit like when x happened (real life/other story), etc etc....

I think talking naturally about the texts they are reading is the first step and then you can go from there to encourage "deeper" answers.

That's good advice, thank you.

I think he does read in secret . He has a bookshelf full of books in his room and will look at them after he's gone to bed.

He tends to immediately go off it if he thinks I like it. Hence his refusal to read Roald Dahl or any of the usual stuff.

Sorry, appear to have gone off on a bit of a tangent.

His school books are becoming increasingly less important as time goes by (dull etc) but I'm keen to keep it up for a little while longer.

That's cool. DS did the secret reading, still reads mostly after bedtime, before "light's out". How does he react if you say "And I'd like you to read something to me, you choose whatever you like?"

He read me a story last night which he chose. I asked him a couple of things about it which he was fine with.

It was a lot easier than his school books but we both enjoyed it more

Fab! Long may it continue. Can't beat those enjoyment vibes IMO .