Reading levels at start of Year 1

[Mumtoprem]

My daughter has just started Year 1 and we have been told she is now on level 3 (Yellow) for reading.

Can anyone tell me what is the average reading level for the start of Year 1 and what level your children are on.

Daughter is statemented, has hearing impairment and speech and language delay.

[cranberryorange]

Ds in on Level 1+ songbirds but i'm not sure where that fits in. The school insist its fine for Yr1

[Mumof3xx]

My ds just started yr1, he started on level 2 and is now on level 3, he reads most level 3 books with ease

[redskyatnight]

The range is very wide at the start of Y1 - from pink to free reading.

I would say yellow is pretty squarely in the "average" category.

[Fuzzymum1]

I'm a TA in a mixed reception and year 1 class. We have children from red (level 2) to green (level 5).

[Fuzzymum1]

I should have said We have year 1 children from red-green.

[Mumof3xx]

Op given that your dd has a hearing impairment and speech and language delay I would say she is doing well!

[lljkk]

DS is probably level 2. He really isn't clicking with reading although he's ok at decoding individual one syllable words.

[sheridand]

From Red to Purple is the range in my class. They're ALL normal!

[Cat98]

Gold but ds is above average. His friend is on red.

[starlight1234]

My son went from red to white in year one.....He just excelled in year 1

[headoverheels]

DD is on green - she is one of the oldest in the class so is already 6.

[Periwinkle007]

I think yellow is where they hope they would be at the start of year 1 but it isn't unusual for children to be on red and for others to be reading chapter books. My daughter's class certainly has some on yellow, she is on chapter books as are a couple of others but they have children throughout all the levels and they are all quite normal.

[mydaftlass]

Dd1 was on red, which didn't concern her teachers. It sounds like she is doing just fine.

[simpson]

DD is on lime. She gets to choose one lime book from the yr2 classroom and one chapter (or non fiction) book a week from the school library.

The majority of her friends are on stage 3-6 but her best friend is on gold.

[jamtoast12]

Dds class aims for everyone to start y1 on level 4 (obviously some exceptions) ...most of her class are level 5 now.

[Retroformica]

She's at an average level for her year group.

[MrsJamin]

Do all schools use the same colour system? Confused. Ds1 was on brown then has now been on green for a month- he's a pretty good reader I think. Is this the same system of colours?

[MrsJamin]

Sorry OP I totally hijacked your thread. What matters is what your teacher says about her progress and how you can both support her reading development, rather than comparison with other children her age.

[Periwinkle007]

MrsJamin - schools can use any colours they want. our school uses the same colours but in a different order to the national curriculum book bands.

NC Book Bands are Pink, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Orange, Turquoise, Purple, Gold, White, Lime and then there are some other KS2 ones. Some schools use different colours depending on what colour labels they have had, whether they had coloured boxes before the NC book band level colours came along, personal choice at school etc. Scheme books will normally say on the back of them somewhere what their NC book band level/colour is. Oxford Reading Tree colours don't match NC book band colours but they have a table on their website which shows how they match up.

[givemeaclue]

Pink to white in my dd class. Huge range.

[mrz]

There aren't any National Curriculum book bands.

The most commonly used Book banding system, a method of levelling texts used by scheme publishers was devised by the IOE but there are other systems the best known being Cliff Moon

[TenthMuse]

I used to teach in Year 1, and yellow level at this stage sounds absolutely fine. As redsky said, children would start on a huge range of levels, but in my experience it was often those on the more 'average' levels who made the most dramatic progress over the course of the year - their phonics skills would suddenly 'click' and they'd develop a real passion for reading. Some of the children whose reading skills were supposedly more advanced were just slightly more mature for their age or had been intensively drilled in phonics at home - they weren't necessarily the more able readers.

As others have said, I'd be wary of comparing levels with other parents. Have a word with your DD's teacher if you're concerned (but it sounds to me that she's perfectly on track).

[thegamesafoot]

TenthMuse

What an interesting perspective.

Given that most phonics schemes stop at orange band I wonder how being "intensively drilled in phonics" would account for those year 1 children currently on gold, white, lime or above?

Mrz I seem to recall you mentioning in the past, when you taught reception, that your most able readers were on white level by the time they finished reception. Could intensive phonics drilling have accounted for this achievement? Perhaps they were slightly more mature for their age than their peers? I wonder if they went on to demonstrate in their year 1 class that they were not necessarily the more able readers?

OP for what it's worth (I'm only a parent after all), being on yellow seems like a real achievement for a statemented child with hearing impairment and speech delay. Yellow is well within the normal range for non-statemented children at this point in year 1.