Should schools be using ORT book bands, rather than stages?

[EmmaW37]

Hi there. This is my first thread. My daughter is in reception (Autumn birthday) and on ORT stage 6 and reading the books well. However recently she has been given ORT stage 5 Story Rhymes Pack B (Gran, Gran, How to Kick start a dragan etc) and she is finding the stories un-interesting and not reading with confidence. I found out online that these books are gold band 9, but generally she reads Orange band 6 books. I have mentioned this in her reading record book, but the teacher hasn't taken any notice. Should the School be working with the reccomended ORT book bands, regardless of what stage it says on the back of the book? Thank you so much.

I too have a DD in Reception, though I think they use Reading Recovery levels rather than ORT, so I can't tell from what you have written how well your DD is doing. But as always with these sorts of issues, I think your best bet is to have an informal chat with the teacher and ask how it works. Hopefully, your DD's teacher is hearing her read regularly and therefore should pick up any issues quickly as well. Good luck.

Hello (and welcome) - the best place to post this is the Primary Education section, where there's a lot more discussion of reading schemes etc.

sorry, cross-posted with Campaspe!

Thank you so much, I will re post. I did speak to the School but they said these books are fine. The teacher doesn't hear my DD read very much (once since January), but does hear her read when they do guided reading in groups. We read one of these books tonight and she was just not interested - they are very boring and hard to understand. We then read another reading book and she read it very well and with confidence. I think we just have a very stubborn teacher. I know other years in the school work with the coloured bands, but reception don't seem to bother.