Just had parent's evening for dd2 ....

[Carla]

... and discovered that they've moved her from the Oxford Reading Tree to a scheme called FuzzBuzz. Well, I just looked up their website and it's for children with SEN.

Does anyone else have children without SEN that have used this scheme? I'm all confused now. I didn't think her reading was that bad.

[kid]

I don't know the fuzzbuzz books but maybe she has read all of the ORT books at her level?

I know the school I work at, we often give children books appropiate to their level even if they are from a different programme.

If the school class your child as SEN, they should inform you before taking any action.

[Carla]

Thanks, kid. No, no-ones ever mentioned SEN, that's why I'm so confused.

[assumedname]

What level Oxford Reading Tree was she on?

[Carla]

This is what I really don't get. In reception, she was coming home with ORT stage 6 in her book bag, with comments like 'well read!'. Well, when I tried to read with her she was clueless. I mentioned this to her reception teacher who said 'a lot of them are like that at home'.

After Easter she moved into a mixed reception/yr 1 class, and it's the new teacher that's moved her on to fuzzbuzz.

Have you any experience of it, then?

[tamum]

I have no experience of the scheme, but it sounds horribly as though the reception teacher was hopeless and this teacher is trying to help the children catch up without actually "demoting" them back down the ORT, maybe? I'm certain they would have said if they had any thought at all that she had SEN.

[Carla]

Thanks tamum, that all makes sense. It was the reception teacher's first year in teaching.

We did express concern that she still gets her 'd's and her 'b's, her 'w's and her 'm's muddled, and that the other day she signed her picture with her name written backwards. She said she'd watch out for signs of dyslexia

[Molecule]

My dd2(8,yr3) has dyslexic tendencies, and is working with FuzzBuzz as well as standard reading books and it has really helped her. She started out at a small prep school, and I began to dread parent's evening, where I was told (in reception and yr1) that she was lazy and willful (at 4 and 5 ffs!). She was on ORT and just guessed at the words, which I find that the scheme encourages. She was very quick at this and would always come up with a suitable word with the correct first letter, but I knew she was not reading. When I mentioned this I was told it was just one of many strategies children use, but to me she had no other strategy. Anyway we moved her to our local primary school for year 2, and she was assessed with a reading age of 4.5. The school were not sure if this was just bad teaching so gave her extra lessons etc for the first year, and then reassessed. Her reading level had not much improved by SATS time and she came out with a level 1. She now has lessons once a week with the SEN teacher, + extra help during lessons, and now has a reading age of 9.5 (but I'm not sure how accurate this is, she is still behind her year) and can read things out of context, such as road signs etc.

FuzzBuzz appears to work on the principle of no irregular words, so the children can work everything out phonetically, and very gradually builds up to more complex words and sounds. I think the main thing is that the child learns to read, and it is good that the school is using different strategies for different children. The ORT, although good fun to read (but 3rd time around it's beginning to become somewhat tedious, and as my 4th starts in September I'm hoping there might be some new stories to be had)can disguise some underlying problems.

Sorry to ramble so, but don't worry about FuzzBuzz being for SEN, the main thing is your dd learns to read.

[Carla]

Thanks Molecule, that was a really interesting and useful post. Maybe they do know what they're doing, after all

Have to say, I'm going to have to get to grips with how the scheme works. I've just popped in to the OUP shop and the stage 1 fuzzbuzz books look far more complicated to me than the stage 1 ORT. (And no, not the ones with no words in them! )

[Carla]

Meant to say, well done to dd2! You must feel v proud and certain that you did the right thing in moving her.

[Molecule]

Carla, yes I am very proud of her, and of the school which has worked really hard. When it came to moving her we really didn't know what to do. I'd looked at the primary school for dd3 as the pre-school said how good it was, but I was too late applying for dd3 and they were over subscribed, but did say they had a place for dd2, who had liked it when we looked round. Anyway we decided to change (and in the event they had a place for dd3 as well) and in two days dd2 had stopped biting her nails and was incredibly happy, literally a changed child.

As usual with any school some parents are not 100% happy, but it suits my two, and hopefully will be OK for ds.