Should I be worried about my 6-year-old's reading?

[Oscillating]

This isn't a humble brag - I'm genuinely after some advice, especially from teachers or parents who've been through something similar.

My DD is 6½ and has just about to finish Year 1. She moved on to being a free reader around Christmas and now reads books like The BFG, How to Train Your Dragon, Animal Ark, Horrid Henry and The 13-Storey Treehouse. She absolutely loves reading and will happily pick up a book whenever she gets the chance.

My concern is that I think school may see her as a stronger reader than she actually is. According to her reading record, she hasn't been listened to by an adult in school since May half term. I don't know whether that's normal once children become free readers, but it has made me wonder whether some things are being missed.

The thing that worries me is what she does with unfamiliar words. If it's a word she doesn't know, she often seems to guess rather than actually decode it.

For example, if she saw the word incredulous, she'd probably read it as incredible. If I stop her and ask her to look carefully, she can often work it out, but not always, another example was the word cordial. She read it as "cordinal". When I asked her to slow down and try again, she said "cordnal". So she wasn't just missing sounds - she was actually adding sounds that weren't there.

If she were still on a phonics scheme, I imagine those sorts of errors would be corrected and she'd have regular opportunities to read aloud to an adult. Now she's a free reader, I'm wondering if she's simply reading quickly and getting away with it because her comprehension is good.

She definitely understands what she's reads. She does well on her Accelerated Reader quizzes, enjoys talking about the books and can tell me all about what's happened.

So...am I worrying unnecessarily? Is this kind of guessing completely normal for children who've moved on from phonics and become fluent readers? Or does it sound as though she may have moved away from phonics a bit too soon?

I'd really appreciate any thoughts, especially from KS1 teachers. I don't want to make an issue where there isn't one, but equally I don't want to ignore something if it could become a habit.

I would raise it with the new teacher in September. But you can help by having her read to you every day or at least several times a week at home. Maybe read to her and then she reads a chapter to you.

How is her spelling? I was tested on dyslexia because my spelling was partly all over the place and I was - still am - a very fast reader, also reading books above my age and while the test was negative, it was recommended to my parents to let me read to them aloud to slow me down and pronounce the words again if I made mistakes. As it can be a chore for the child as it takes a lot longer to read a book, my mum did the "I read to you, you read to me" game and it worked as I was then able to finish the book in my normal speed

She won't get an adult to hear her reading her reading book, not unless you have volunteer reading nannies in school. The new advice is that this is time better spent on planned interventions rather than ad hoc corrections. The teacher will still hear her reading during the week, from the guided reading they do in class.

I'm not a teacher, but I don't think this is something to worry about. Does it really matter if she misreads a few words when she still has a good understanding of the story and is very much enjoying reading?

Everything I've read tells me that the absolute priority is kids enjoying reading. The more she reads the more she will come across these tricky words and different contexts may mean she starts understand them better and indeed read them correctly.

I think the vast majority of early free reader kids misread words they haven't come across before, but I think it all gets ironed out eventually as they read more and learn more.

What you absolutely don't want to do is to introduce anything that makes reading seem like a chore or less fun.
I really don't think reading mistakes at this age and reading level are anything to worry about.

My eldest was an early reader and we still laugh at all the crazy pronunciations he came up with for certain words when he read them in his head for the first time. But it's all sorted now he's 12!

I think this is quite common in keen readers. They read quickly and get the general gist but make quite a lot of errors. It's why getting children to read aloud is really valuable. She will still ultimately be ahead of the majority of other children though and likely continue in that way so it's not worrying as such. Hearing children read at school is time consuming and doesn't always happen as often as it should. By Y3 certainly, and to an extent in Y2, teachers will be hearing them read in lots of situations that aren't sitting down with a reading book. Reading with her yourself would take 5 minutes a day and be as useful as (or very close to) a teacher/TA reading with her.
(I currently teach Y3)

Also, for the avoidance of confusion on this thread, it sounds like her school has free readers after around Lime level. In lots of schools, you'd continue on colours for many years after this. I'm not really sure why so many schools stop at a KS1/early KS2 level.