What reading band is your Year 1 child on?

[user263758988]

For those of you whose school follow the Oxford Reading Tree, where is your Year 1, Term 1, child sitting?

I don't want to be THAT mum at the school gates or WhatsApp group, sometimes better to ask these on an anonymous forum without judgement 😊

It's not a humble brag. It's important to know what the best thing to do is if your child is ahead. It seems clear to me that the schools need to get better at explaining WHY the child shouldn't go ahead

My DS was seriously behind having moved schools in reception. In year 1 he was out on a remedial programme we did with him. he’s now one of the best readers in year 5! I wouldn’t worry where they are at this age.

They all even out to roughly the same, I can't believe how wound up some people get on what reading band their infant children are currently on.

I agree. Ds is still learning to use scissors and to write his name. He talks like a much older child and has a passion for books and words. Possible autism I know. They are all different, it's annoying to be accused of bragging.

Agree with @windypumpkin - schools should be clearly communicating the rationale behind whole class phonics teaching/fidelity to the scheme at the start of the year.

Otherwise (as has happened in our case) parents will compare it to what happened ‘in their day’, where fluent readers were able to jump ahead, and it leads to flurries of WhatsApp messages complaining that the books are too easy (which then leaves parents of those children not finding them easy to think there’s something wrong).

Our school had a curriculum meeting right at the start of Year 1 - the reading books policy could easily have been mentioned there, but wasn’t.

Some guidance on whether to insist on the scheme books, or gently encourage, or just not mention the books to a child already forming a negative association, would be helpful. At the moment we are going with gently encourage which isn't working.

I’d love to see a comparable thread for Read Write Inc. DD is in Year 1 and in the Yellow group for RWI. All I know is that there are two more groups to complete - Blue, then Grey.

I asked DD the other day who was in her reading group and she charmingly replied, “a lot of dummies”. I didn’t point out that that if that’s the case, she must be one of the “dummies”.

It’s really not that hard to work out what to do if your child is ahead - just read books suitable for their level with them at home.

Ime there is usually stuff you can work on even with much easier reading books - eg reading with expression, discussing punctuation, asking them to come up with synonyms or rhymes, relating story to their experiences - but if you truly have exhausted all that then it’s fine just to leave the school book in their bag and ignore it. And speak to their teacher if you’re not happy.

it’s fine just to leave the school book in their bag and ignore it

I wasn't sure if this was the right thing to do or if it would affect my child's attitude towards school. He knows he is meant to read the book so I wasn't sure if I should therefore keep encouraging, even though it isn't working 😕 . He reads with expression, putting in the punctuation, and talks about the story when reading picture books from home and the library.

Why not just get him to read it to you once then, tell him it’s fantastic and move on?

And there is always something you can find to talk about to extend them.

He won't 'read' the book (wordless) at all. He insists on reading different books.

Not sure whether you are really interested as it kind of feels like you just want someone to tell you your little darling is too smart for school.

But your options are basically (a) tell him his teacher would like him to go through the school books at least once or (b) don’t.

In either scenario you carry on reading him the stuff he wants to read. And it will all even out very quickly.

So you insist that you do. And do it together. Use VIPERS. Use it with different books. But don't let him ignore his school book, even if it seems too young or too easy.

And I sat that as someone who works in a school, and my DC is classed as the "bottom 20", because he can't read according to the phonics scheme. Yet he's just picked up a book he's never seen before and read perfectly fluently. I don't agree that the phonics schemes work for every child, but they do work for most. As frustrating as they may be.

I'm not sure where you got that idea. He's a little child with some autistic traits, he struggles with some other things but just happens to read. I just didn't know whether to try to make him, keep just suggesting it, or let it go. I wasn't told what to do by the school if we experienced refusal.

@Pipistrellus None of this is rocket science. If you really don’t know what to do then ask the school.

It’s odd that a child who enjoys reading wouldn’t enjoy sharing even a simple book with a parent, even a wordless book. But if that’s truly what is happening then I wouldn’t force it with the wordless ones, but would try again when he gets some with words.

@3amShopper

By insist, do you mean impose consequences?

@ParentsTrapped

He's always been allowed to choose books until the scheme book, that's new for him. New can be difficult. He doesn't understand why he can't just read the sharing book he chose from school. I'll wait until they have words then try again.

I do, but that's just me. What do you do when he insists on not reading it and instead doing something else?

My DC know that school work is non negotiable, like cleaning their teeth or washing their hands before food. It's just something that has to be done. If they don't do it then they have to stay in at break time/don't get a house point etc, so it's best to just get it done. They have consequences at school for not doing it.

At home, if it was out and out refusal, I'd probably say that there would be no TV/Xbox/tablet/Lego/whatever until it was done.

My DC is 6 and on the ASD spectrum, so I had to build it into the daily schedule from the first term of nursery school.

@3amShopper
I've only suggested we do that book first, encouraged, so he hasn't done anything wrong at this point by saying he'd like to read the sharing book or another book. He happily reads another book and i write it in the journal. I was hoping that soon he would be assessed and we would just get books he will want to read so I wouldn't have to make it a non negotiable chore with consequences. That feels like a significant decision to do that.

Is it also possible that there’s an element of autistic tendency to see things in black and white here, and as far as he’s concerned, books have words and/or reading involves looking at works, so being asked to ‘read’ a wordless book is confusing to him? (Apologies if I’m way off here!) in which case you may find that as soon as there are a couple of words on each page, he’s far happier to read the school book.

My daughter was perplexed by wordless books to start. However after half term she brought home a book with words and was quite miffed that some of the other children still have wordless ones and she has words 😂😂😂

@modgepodge That may be part of the issue. He loves words, he was reciting books long before he could read. He enjoys and talks about pictures too but I think he does expect something to read.

My DS also didn't "get" wordless books, we just talked about the pictures, what was happening, characters, what might happe next etc.

Mine is very black and white, so if I hadn't made it part of the routine, he'd assume it wasn't necessary, and it would have caused bother further down the line. But I have a reluctant reader (probably dyslexic/very rigid phonics scheme the school uses doesn't work for him) so it's always been a bit of a battle.

If he's reading, and he's happy, you're happy with the progress, and school aren't flagging anything then definitely keep going the way you are!