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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to think reading scheme books should be about subject interesting to young children.

29 replies

JesusChristBenton · 04/12/2011 13:00

Five year old DD has been sent home with an Oxford Reading Tree book about Bands. It has pages of text about the drummer "laying down the beats", Destiny's Child not paying their own instruments, the formation of the Beatles (with long lists of their hits), Gnarls Berkley's first single getting to number one etc etc

DD is 5 FFS.

She does not know what a single is, has no concept of the charts, lists of names of Beatles songs bore her to tears, the fact that Mick Jagger has been in The Rolling Stones for 50 years is incomprehensible to her.

These books are aimed at y1 kids. What is wrong with fairy tales stories that might actually catch their imagination?

OP posts:

WorraLiberty · 04/12/2011 13:02

It's not usually either/or though is it?

Some kids like the more factual books, I know my boys have always preferred them to fiction.

Horses for courses really

CupOfGoodCheer · 04/12/2011 13:16

What stage is she on?

I'm a teacher and iirc up until about stage 6 it is wall to wall fairy tales and Biff and Chip.

The stage 6 and above readers generally find the non-fiction books interesting - there are ones about how your body works, the space race, explorers etc.

Original poster

JesusChristBenton · 04/12/2011 13:16

I have nothing against non-fiction. We had a great one about oceans a few weeks back. But is any 5 year old seriously interested in when The Rolling Stones Formed, who is in Destiney's Child and whether Gnarls Berkley got to number one?

OP posts:

ButWhyIsTheGinGone · 04/12/2011 13:17

If you can find books that will appeal to your children it makes a huuuuge difference to their approach to reading.
I split my class into guided reading groups and my bottom group consists of 6 boys who "hate readin' miss."
I've manged a to dig out 6 copies of a fantastic book about..erm...well toilets throughout history. They're specifically aimed for guided reading sessions and I would imagine at reuctant readers.They are fabulously illustrated and humourous without being coarse. The lads LOVE them and cannot wait to read each week.
So yes, a book with interesting and relevant subject matter is really important to ensure children love reading.

Original poster

JesusChristBenton · 04/12/2011 13:18

X-post Cup. She is ORT level 10 (white band). As I say, she likes some of the non-fiction, but the subject matter of some of the books seems to ignore the age of the children they are aimed at.

OP posts:

Original poster

JesusChristBenton · 04/12/2011 13:19

Historical toilets sound great. Must better than Cee-Lo bloody Green.

OP posts:

CupOfGoodCheer · 04/12/2011 13:32

Stage 10 isn't really aimed at 5 yr olds, she must be a very advanced reader.

I would expect my year 2's to be reading around stage 10 on average at the end of the year, so they would be 7 yrs old, some nearing 8.

Saying that, there's a book about Mel B around stage 12 which is dire - I let them skip the ones they're not interested in reading once they've done a couple of pages.

Original poster

JesusChristBenton · 04/12/2011 13:36

Thank Cup. She is advanced at decoding words but I am not sure she is advanced at understanding meaning, recognising punctuation etc. Maybe they have moved her up too fast. She will not be six until the end of August. If she was on a lower level the subject matter might be more relevant and she could have time to concentrate on the other aspects of reading beyond word recognition.

OP posts:

CupOfGoodCheer · 04/12/2011 13:46

I wouldn't have moved her up (particularly not all the way to stage 10) without being absolutely sure she was understanding what she was reading, and could read fluently, with an appreciation of grammar, paragraphs and all the rest.

Reading is about much more than simply decoding sounds. I would imagine it must be pretty boring for your DD to be decoding endless paragraphs of words without getting any enjoyment from the story (which comes with actually understanding what you are reading!)

Is it worth having a word with the teacher and asking for her to be moved down, or if she has read everything in every previous stage (which I doubt), asking if she can read simpler books from the school library?

CupOfGoodCheer · 04/12/2011 13:48

sorry, I meant to add that the school should be fostering a love of reading, and this seems unlikely to happen if she is "reading" (or simply decoding?) books way above her natural reading level.

Triggles · 04/12/2011 14:04

We're still baffled over a recent book DS2 was given for reading at home. It was one of those "magic key" books, and the children were taken back to Noah's Ark. Noah refused to allow their dog on the ark as he already had two dogs and couldn't take three of them. So the children stayed behind with the dog and Noah sailed off, leaving them behind in the floodwaters.

What a charming depiction of Noah. I made a comment in DS2's reading diary asking if this was their usual portrayal of biblical characters as heartless and quite happy to leave a couple children and their dog to drown? It was all a bit odd.

BuntyPenfold · 04/12/2011 14:48

Triggles - what a horrible book, and very similar to one I just read in Waterstones. It was on the same shelves as The Gruffalo and depicts a friend of Noah, who built another ark loaded with rescued pairs of animals - extinct animals - and when the rain came, this other ark didn't float!!
Lovely bedtime tale, not.

Triggles · 04/12/2011 14:50

Bunty Seriously!?! How charming! I'll make sure to steer clear of THAT book!

CupOfGoodCheer · 04/12/2011 14:56

There's one around stage 8 called Olympic Adventure, which I was reading with one of my pupils last week.

On page 2, one of the boys in class, when told that there was going to be a sports day, asked whether the girls would be doing a sewing race....

I made a note in the reading record that the child and I had discussed this part of the story (well I had had a bit of a rant and the child, bless him, had nodded along) and the parent wrote a note back bemoaning the lack of advancement of the feminist cause in ORT....

Triggles · 04/12/2011 15:08

I think I might have had a bit of difficulty keeping a straight face at "sewing race"....

onefatcat · 04/12/2011 15:11

I have the same problem with dd. She has just gone 6 and in Y2, and she is a good reader, about to move to stage 10 ORT and although she finds the fiction fine, the non fiction at this level is really aimed at 8year olds and a bit beyond her interest level. In addition to this the non fiction topics are generally aimed at boys in the 'push to get boys reading', which is needed, but don't know why they can't have a broader range of non-fiction and children choose the books which then interest them. For eg, out of the 6 non-fiction in the set the topics were
1.computers,
2.athletes
3.robots
4.comics
5.disasters
6.diamonds
Out of these the only appealing one was diamonds (I know it may be sexist to suggest girls aren't interested in these topics, or that they are aimed at boys, but I think it's true of lots of girls, and we wouldn't expect boys to be interested, generally, in ballet, jewellry, fluffy bunnies, etc).

spiderpig8 · 04/12/2011 17:22

boast post

Triggles · 04/12/2011 18:00

oh please. If you don't have anything constructive or interesting to add, find someone else to bother, spiderpig

jamdonut · 04/12/2011 18:59

We have some good new ones at school for (I think) level 8+...Sarah Jane Adventures and Doctor Who! I LOVE reading these with the kids!!

scruffybird · 04/12/2011 19:09

Oh I love a good boast post as I can boast about how DS was on chapter books when he was five

foreverondiet · 04/12/2011 19:30

I spoke to head teacher at my DCs school when DD was in year 1.

She said she will not let any child however good go past ORT 10 in year 1 or 2 (other than the all star books). She said the content isn't really suitable, and if their reading is that good she'll find material from other schemes. But if anycase the head said however good a child was at word recognition and decoding it was also about understanding so she said it was relatively rare for that to happen anyway.

So to the OP, sounds like your DD is extremely advanced but that you need to speak to the school about appropriate reading material. The All Star books are ORT at level 10-11 for advanced infant readers, basically fairy stories and your DD would like them. The book you are describing would be more suitable for a 10 year old (in content) and is NOT aimed at a 5 year old.

We also had the Noah book recently, but I think the point was more to go back to visit historical events. As the books advance (have seen them all with DD) the children generally get saved by being able to escape with the magic key so I guess it was just following the same pattern.

Bewilderedmum · 04/12/2011 19:54

Scruffy - mine too! :o I did find though that the reading schemes as the difficulty of decoding words increased, it assumed a level of maturity/understanding on the child that wasn't always there. We found loads of other stuff for them to read, as did the school...

One of my favourite ORT stories was a biff and chip one, where they were looking for something in an area of grassland - might have been a kite or a key. One of the pictures involved the children looking mystified, and this bloke with his head poking out of a bush, with a perfect handlebar moustache, looking rather furtive - Ex-dh and I surrepticiously pissed ourselves laughing - it looked like hampstead heath!! :o

Not a boast post though - ds1 (14) has a degree of dyspraxia, and needs an alpha-smart board to write, as his fine motor skills are poor, and Ds2 got demoted in the school nativity from narrator to a sheep the other day! x

Triggles · 04/12/2011 20:04

foreverondiet yes I get that, but it still was a rather shitty portrayal of Noah. DS2 doesn't like the magic key stuff (neither do I but I'm careful not to say anything to him about it), so we're looking forward to getting away from them. I'm also still wondering why the grandmother wasn't allowed to get the red sports car she wanted. to be fair, DS2 didn't understand either. He liked the red sports car.

scruffybird · 04/12/2011 20:33

Bewildered, lol at the sheep!
It seems to be quiet common these days, as a boy in DS s class got demoted from an alien to narrator number four!
People moan about the Biff chipper books, but I find some of them really funny.

purpleturtletoise · 04/12/2011 20:40

I have just suggested to DS2 that the reason the family's car broke down when they went on holiday (At the Seaside - ORT) might have been that it was a little car with 2 adults and 5 children in it. All luggage apparently piled on the roof. Those were the days!

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