To be fed up with primary teachers holding readers back due to ‘comprehension’?

[FishChipsandKipper]

DS was moving steadily through reading levels until a senior teacher decided this was all wrong and said no one can move levels until they’ve given ‘the verbal answers I approve of’ to show comprehension.

DS has now been on the same level for over a year and read some books 5 times.

DS has a speech delay, but can read well and answers multiple choice questions written down to show comprehension.

Do the school accept this? No. I’ve given up and bought my own reading books off Amazon.

Why do schools do this??

I assume school are well aware of his speech delay? What have they said about letting him show his understanding in different ways? Are they doing this?

I have never heard of another school doing this and I disapprove in the strongest terms. To the extent that I would consider changing schools.

I despise reading bands of all kinds - they absolutely inhibit reading (I was extremely slow to learn to read as a child - absolutely stuck and wag behind everyone else - until I finally had a teacher who let me skip out all the banded books and take home an actually enjoyable chapter book - then I more or less taught myself to read fluently in a night. )

Most primary schools seem to favour book bands sadly. But to inhabit your son's progress through them due to his speech delay is absolutely disgusting.

Definitely go in to speak to the teacher. And meanwhile, get him some actually interesting reading books for home if you can. And totally ignore the books he is sent home with, and tell the teacher that's what you intend to do.

I mean, way to make the poor boy hate reading.....

Have you discussed with someone above this teacher to ask why they are discriminating against someone with a speech issue?

He can read and understand and show that he understands by answering written questions. I assume he could write the a sentence with the answers the teacher is looking for? He can’t just do multiple choice; he needs to be able to come up with the answer himself and not just tick a multiple choice.

Yes I saw that happening in my kids primary school. Not that it was “approved of” but answers ryat would show comprehension at a deeper level. However not sure what deeper level there is when Biff, Kipper and others travel through the ages 😆😆😆

anyway do buy your own books. Thats what I did. I explained to the kids that those books are homeworks, and those ones are pleasure. We used to go to the bookshop 3/4 times a month, and the library.

We had this albeit years ago. It’s of course important that they understand what they’re reading but at times it was more about protracted comprehension exercises which went too far. I remember the teacher telling me once that my DC got 91% in the test which wasn’t good enough but they’d put her through as it was borderline. It turned out the answers DC was giving to very specific (and a bit odd) questions about bee-keeping were more detailed than the system required due to the fact a relative knew about it and had discussed the process with her.

I found the whole thing frustrating. Clearly it’s only a short period of their school life but made reading at school really boring. The 32 page book about bike parts and head injuries for not wearing helmets was not a high point either…..

It was years ago and said child has just graduated with an English degree and is still a great reader and articulate so all’s well that ends well - but I definitely remember the frustration. There did seem to be a system of putting a large number of hoops for the ones who read well early so the official reading level gap with the others in the class wasn’t too big.

My youngest had a reading level way in advance of her writing, but had to complete all the written answers before moving on. We ignored the books sent home and carried on with chapter books at home. She did the tick box work at school and enjoyed reading fluently at home.

You need to discuss this with the school. The system we use does use multiple choice questions to assess comprehension so you might want to check what they are using (ours is AR).

Comprehension is important. I have a lot of good readers in my phonics group, yet some of them haven't moved up due to lack of understanding. They read the words on the page but have no idea what they have just read. We spend some time talking about the words and how they might be spelt the same but have different meanings e.g. minute could be a minute of time, or minute as in very small, so it's important they understand the rest of the sentence to know which pronunciation and meaning is being used.

I like the idea that they want children to understand what they are reading but surely they need to adapt how they do this to meet additional needs. I’d push back on this.

You need to talk to your child's teacher. Comprehension is really important. The ability to sound words out correctly is the base (like learning times tables) but it's the ability to guess what might happen next, to understand what has happened that's crucial to navigate the world around them, to create written pieces of work etc.

I am a Teaching Assistant coming working with adults. The adults I work with are people who haven't achieved GCSE English (and/or Maths) at school and now the lack of it is holding them back in employment. Some of these people come to us straight onto GCSE courses, others are several levels behind this.

I have a one-to-one with every student at the start of the year to see what they find easy/hard/what they needs support with etc. The number of people who say some version of "I can read, but I don't feel like I've fully got the meaning of the text" is high, and often it's what people feel is holding them back in life, because in the real world you read to understand. If you are reading some instructions, a pay slip, a memo about something in the office, a report on your child's schooling. or your workplace structure and you don't really understand it, then being able to read it doesn't really help you!

If you actually mean that the school is refusing to accept your child's explanation of what they have read because his teachers don't understand every word of his explanation, then that is really bad and you need to be talking to the school about how they are failing to meet your son's communication needs like big time! However if your child is really failing to understand what he is reading, please be working on why this is and how to help him understand, not push for him to get harder reading because he can read!

I've been teaching kids to read over 25 years. The current system removed professional judgement, is backed by pseudo-science, and removes any joy there might have been in getting lost in a book.
Ignore school and enjoy your own books at home.

This is way too common I think. A friend had this last year with her DD. Friend is the literacy coordinator at another primary school, and raised it many times with the teacher. She brought books home from work.

My own DC have been held longer on a level than necessary because they are not reading with expression.

I had something similar with my daughter back in the 1990s. She was a prodigious reader but they had a ridiculous rule that placed a barrier level for each year group that no child could go past. As she was a fluent reader when she started school, it was total madness. And she did understand what she was reading. But her teacher's hands were tied.

I then went to the head and really had to fight my corner. He then called her teacher in who confirmed that my daughter understood what she was reading (much to his clear disappointment) and 'as an exception' DD was allowed to progress through the levels beyond the barrier.

I had the advantage of being a teacher though, and so could argue my case educationally in a way that other parents might not have been able to.

I'm disappointed that this kind of thing is still an issue in some schools.

This really frustrates me when teachers can't understand that speech delays are isolated expressive delays and do not always affect understanding. Edited: as I said at all which isn't true.

Sometimes our children's expressive language (how they get their words out) doesn't always catch up at the same pace as their receptive language (what they understand) when they have a significant speech delay, and it's unfair to expect them to suddenly develop this skill especially if there is an underlying cause.

Obviously the whole point of reading is to understand what you have read.

I think i have understood you and the issue is your child's speech delay means he has to demonstrate understanding in a different way to the teachers expectation.

Can you email the senco and explain that and ask if a SaLT can make some recommendations?

What an exemplary way to strip any pleasure out of reading! Your poor son, how demoralising. I would definitely buy your own books, but I’d also be tempted to flag this to a different member of staff? Is there a literacy lead/head of key stage/ senco? or even the head?

There is surely a framework that allows children to progress through reading stages? A teachers gut feel that stagnates a childs development for an entire year does not seem to be an appropriate measure for progress or indicate it’s working very well. Also, if she has not allowed him to progress for that long, she should surely have introduced some intervention steps to help him by now

The reading book is just one book, children can read as many books as they want from the thousands available to buy or to borrow.
The school reading scheme is like having swimming lessons, repetitive and structured to make sure all skills are learned and embedded. Swimming lessons are once a week, the child can go to the swimming pool, the sea, as many times as they want and play and have fun, but in swimming lessons they need to work through the steps.
School reading schemes are rigid because they progress through all the necessary skills to be a fluent and competent reader as an adult. It’s easy for children to look like they are reading fluently but to be missing some of the higher comprehension skills. Many adults cannot read properly and this has a huge impact on their life chances.
Being able to answer a multiple choice question is not a good measure of comprehension.

Obviously in this case it’s wrong because the OP’s child can show comprehension in other ways-but usually, comprehension is surely the most important part of reading?

I have never heard of another school doing this and I disapprove in the strongest terms. To the extent that I would consider changing schools

My DD had a teacher who did this in year 2. Completely turned her off reading. We did move. A lot of the time it was just “answers I approve of” too - she didn’t spend enough time discussing the book to get a real understanding of what the child had taken from it. The final straw was when she announced that DD “hadn’t understood” a book that we’d marked in her reading record the day half term started because she couldn’t instantly remember the intricacies of the (rather mundane) plot when randomly put on the spot a week later.

Can you ask the teacher what kind of questions they ask and then practice that with your son at home using a range of books?

And are you really saying that your son has never read any books apart from the ones that he gets from school? Get down to your local library and let him choose some books himself!

I would complain about him having to read the same books over and over, and carry on reading your own books at home. The library is great for this so you don't have to be continually paying out.

Unfortunately this is a fairly common issue in schools and I’m not sure you are going to be able to get round it without making your complaint to someone more senior in the school. Even then it’s a bit hit and miss.

You may manage to get them to agree to sending home more than one book. One matched to his phonics/decoding level and one to where they think his comprehension is. Obviously you can work on any comprehension skills that are an issue with the harder book but it may be easier to get the school to agree to this. Failing that, you might need to go to your local library and check out their early/beginning reader selection (if that’s the sort of level he’s on).

Stay in your lane seems to be the message here for lots of our DC. Have any of the diktats shared by previous posters come from independent schools? I moved my DC after several years on the governing body when I realised school couldn’t and wouldn’t cater to DC who wanted to strive for more as that would ‘widen the gap’ between social classes in the school. Their idea of differentiation was doing a harder worksheet while the rest of the class engaged in a lesson pitched at ‘their’ level. No spontaneity or drive to ask the rest of the class to explore a harder question for five minutes along with the more advanced DC.

Final straws were when prerecorded English lessons during Covid - using examples DC were meant to follow - included misspelt words and grammatically incorrect sentences.

And when year 3 DC asked why the earth’s core was hot when it was furtherest from the sun and her teacher told her to go away and Google it…

@FishChipsandKippercan I please recommend that you don’t order books online for your son? Take him to a library, and let him choose for himself. Online shopping cannot give a child the sense of awe of standing in front of rows of books and being allowed to look at them all, pick them up, flick through the pages and choose whichever one takes your fancy.

Of course comprehension is important, but if the child is being forced to read the same books for a year, it's obviously not working and all it's doing is turning him off reading.

We were a bookish family so constantly bought and borrowed books for my daughter, but she still felt demoralised and bored being given very basic readers at school.

And yes @FishChipsandKipper I agree with the poster above. Take your boy to the library regularly, or if you want to buy the books, take him to a bookshop and let him browse and choose. Buying books on line really isn't the answer