To think this is not good enough?

[Feelingdisappointed2024]

My child is in Year 1 in a state primary and is given 1 reading book a week in a green book band. She is being told to read said book every night. It is SO boring so we've stopped doing it, and I've spent a small fortune on supplementing the school reading with other phonics books. Sometimes the reading book is repeated, and last term we had the same book for 3 weeks!

Am I being unreasonable to expect the school to provide more books, or is this just what everybody has to do in the state system? Is one reading book a week really recommended at this age? The local independent school gives the children a book a night!

The pace just seems so pedestrian and it's taking so long for her reading to progress. Is this normal or am I just being pushy.

Thank you for your message - this is it exactly! We are of course supplementing with books at home, but the phonics scheme is very prescriptive and we want to support what she is learning in school. Your experience of the independent sector echoes that of my friends, and I can't help but think that the children are going to be far more motivated and engaged learners using a range of books to practise the same sounds!

At school alone, my daughter is exposed to 10 phonics books per term. My friend's son in a prep school, reads 100 phonics books in the same term.

Thank you for your message. It sounds like you are doing the same as us. My daughter is also doing well but again it's because of what we are doing at home and the books we are buying. Do you buy phonics books/take out phonics books from the library or just chapter/picture books to supplement?

As an aside why dont people read the post and actually comprehend what’s been said

in the main post I got that the child gets a book a week to read, that it’s a state school and that the op supplements reading books and is fed up of doing so

so how come the first few posters didnt seem to understand that from the post?

Op instead of buying books do as other suggest and go to your nearest library whenever possible. And I would speak to the school and see if they can offer more books

No they don't have more books. They read as a group of 5, so buy 5 of the same one.(or 6 to cover losses). And this results in a very small range of reading books to share between KS1.

BUT no one seems to think that it's a bad thing. I know the area and school are affluent enough to purchase more books with support from what is a successful PTA. It's more that the thinking is that the one book a week is the right thing for success.

But all those with children who are doing well are buying their own phonics books to supplement

Thank you for your message. Do the libraries stock phonics books? I haven't come across them in our local ones but maybe I need to look harder. I think she'd find chapter books too challenging at the moment, and feel like the phonics books are right for her at the moment and we just need more of them!

@Dixiechickonhols I completely agree with this. It feels like the sooner she learns to read freely, the more access she will have to the whole curriculum. I can well believe those who read early do better.

But I do feel like access to more books would enable this. Especially early reader/phonics books of the type schools provide

I see nothing has changed since my kids started reception 20 years ago.

Like the OP, we supplemented at home, lots of bed time reading and use of the library.

Urrrgh some of the books are so tedious. I remember when mine was young and they had to start with books without words, they were enough to put anyone off books and reading for life. Rosie's Walk they were not - and there's only so many times that Rosie's Walk is funny and entertaining.

15 years ago I didn't think the books were changed enough - I expect things have only got worse. Remember though if you get books from the library that are a little hard you can always take in turns reading bits of it. If she has favourite books that you read to her she can join in with reading little bits of them as well.

There just isn't the time or resource to listen to individual children read and change books very often in schools unfortunately.

Ds, year 1 gets one book a week. We supplement with other books, which we let him pick from as and when, and I listen to him read his school book once or twice, a week, more if he's clearly struggling with it. But it's cery very dull of you read it every night. I remember feeling the same as a kid, and I also worry about turning him off reading through sheer boredom.

We picked up a bunch of biff chip kipper etc type books second hand, bundles of them come up regularly in Facebook marketplace. We also have a load of usborne first reader books because our local softplay, which is a popular birthday party destination, puts them in their party bags. Ds is currently reading one of those to the dog as we speak. He also reads board books to his sister, reads road signs, stuff on TV screens, we encourage him to read out whatever he sees really to give him variety.

My library is very small but can usually pick up some phonics books or visit a bigger library sometimes. I have found eBay the absolute best source of phonics books though. If you ‘watch’ a listing, you usually get offered a lower price a couple hours later. I think I’ve finally reached enough now that I won’t need to buy any for a few months!

Did you look at reading chest link? It’s £12 a month for phonics books. I did it for 2 months. Dd was reading and had good phonics grounding at end of reception and very keen. We had lots of books and went to library but the phonics books were perfect for that small window of time. She started yr 1 several bands higher than left. Flew through rest of reading scheme and happily got on to free readers.
My experience was the early good readers blossomed, could fully access curriculum and got opportunities eg she was often chosen to speak in assembly or narrator in play.

RWI phonics books are around £2k for the set. School books are incredibly boring and most teachers in KS2, including myself when I was a KS2 teacher, bought more books for the book shelf. Books are very expensive unfortunately. That does not excuse it and personally, I would bring it up and question the books. We would change books 1-2 times a week in Y1, depending if the child has read at home. We read with the children in school twice a week, not including their phonics lesson.

Whilst it is important to read the school book, it is also just as important to read books from home/the library too.

Reading also isn't just about being able to read the book, it is about understanding it too. Go to a specific page and ask a question linked to the text or imagine; read the book yourself to your child but stop at a word and your child has to say what the next word is; search for a tricky word; do my turn your turn where one reads a sentence then the other reads a sentence.

Or maybe - just maybe - some of those words might appear in the next book? Given it's a reading scheme, you know.

We are at a small independent (reception but at year 1 level) and get a new book 2-3 times per week. The teacher likes the whole thing read at school and home. Day one would be half at school and the same half re read at home, day 2 is the same with the second half, then new book day 3. She says it's because they can make sure they are fluent on anything they find a bit tricky before moving on.
If your DD is finding it easy and flying through the whole thing each night then I'd ask for a more challenging book and if you can swap mid week.
I also buy the Oxford Julia Donaldson ones which are very good and match up with the phonics from school.

I had this plodded along all through P.1. We would read other stuff too. The whole class moved up to stage 2 and then they had their reading assessed. One twin went to stage 5 the other to stage 4. I was a bit 🤔as they’d didn’t actually say anything it just went from a sentence on a page to a short chapter book. It wasn’t just them two children went all the way up to a six. I have older children who plodded through every book. Still really good readers for their age. P4 now

"But all those with children who are doing well are buying their own phonics books to supplement"

So as a group can't you swap books so that you aren't all buying lots?

See, I remember back in the day when my DS could change his book daily, so long as I'd written that we'd read it the night before. He could read easily by the end of Reception.

Then came the Literacy Hour. My other three went through this. One book a week, so boring. We used to go to the library, bought a lot of books, to sort this discrepancy out, but not one of those three read as a habit, whereas number one reads all the time.

OP, try and read different books as much as you can.

DS has 2 books a week, one at a time, and has to read it 3x before book change day or it doesn’t get changed. One of those 3 times is usually reading to someone at school.

Theyre boring books (we’re not on colours but ‘units’, dunno what scheme it is).

He’s year 1 and reads things like 13 Storey Treehouse, Dogman etc outside of his school-set books.

Afraid we mostly ignored the school books. We would go and check out a pile from the library, read those together every night. Plus we have an amazing charity shop the sells kids books for 20p each, every time we’d go to town we would stock up.
State schools just don’t have the time or funding.

Our primary has currently been advised to do exactly this by the phonics/reading advisory team.
One book per week and the child has to have read it at least 3 times before it can be changed.
I’d bet school have been told to do this or they’ll fail their Ofsted.
It’s all part of the current phonics obsession. Children are not to be allowed to read anything unless it links exactly with their place in the phonics scheme. ☹️
Just wait, in 5 years time they’ll be a national scandal about a generation of kids who all hate to read.
Do the bare minimum for school and then read other stuff with Dc at home.

This is Little Wandle (Collins Big Cat). It is not the school's doing. It is a direct result of Ofsted lunacy.

Ofsted have forced schools to commit to a single phonics scheme or they will get RI. The biggest schemes (so most choice of books) are RWI and Little Wandle. Both require the same book to be read multiple times over the week for prosody.

The majority of teachers think this IS a bad thing (not repeating a book. That is good. Only having one 'brand' of book is the bad thing). But teacher's don't actually get a say in education, despite being the trained experts.

I think if you feel strongly about this, talk to the school. If it’s a funding issue, offer to help the PTA organise an event (e.g for money for new books, a cheap book sale for affordable variety , a book amnesty for non returned books etc).

its likely a ‘scheme of work’ choice, to meet the curriculum.

As has been said up thread, reading isn’t just about graphemes association and phonics - it’s also about; semantics, comprehension, information extraction, early exposure to grammar rules (subject, verb, object order. Capital letters for nouns etc).

These areas scaffold the child’s learning, so that they can expand their vocabulary and reading skills.

It’s probable, that the schools’ approach to hitting all of these teaching milestones involves reading the same book all week.

This doesn’t preclude, reading other books for pleasure, which is of course heavily linked with good educational outcomes.

My dd was also reading in reception. In year 1 she got the roald Dahl series for Xmas and we stopped reading the shit the school was sending her home with. I got a note in her record book shortly after saying could I please start reading with her regularly or she was going to fall behind, she was still coming home with biff and chip books when at home she was reading Danny the champion of the world every night. I just started signing the record book like she was reading them when she wasn’t 🤷🏼‍♀️
Op have you got a good library, the one by me actually borrows books from other libraries if you request one you haven’t got. Also you can get phonic books for free on kindles, they have pictures as well as text. Also trawl the charity shops. And if you’ve got an iPad there as so many apps you can use. This is more for learning to read and write than for reading whole books, but I thoroughly recommend reading egg. I taught my ds to read within a couple of months with this app

Not all phonic books suit all children tbf. My eldest really struggled with reading. I found the ORT project X books really good and much more interesting than standard biff, chip and kipper. Really can not be made to repeat books ( possible adhd as well as dyslexia) but language was really repetitive so was able to pick it up across books but wanted to keep going as was engaged with the storylines. None of the other children are fans though.

I think what I’ve learned is there is no one size fits all approach to learning to read. I don’t think phonics is necessarily the best way of teaching all children to read.

I find attempting to decode phonics an absolute struggle. My brain just refuses to compute.

These books aren't really there for enjoyment, they're given to practise actual reading and fluency, which requires re-reading. All reading scheme books are dull, so we encourage children to take home books to read for pleasure too.
You can do that yourself. Get down to the library or get her a set of interesting books to work through alongside.

Reading scheme books and the whole hassle of changing them and checking records is a headache for us teachers anyway, especially with 30+ kids. When I worked in EYFS I used to spend two whole lunchtimes writing in home school records. Urgh.