My daughter is using the Collins Big Cat Phonics books at school, but at home we have an old (10-15 years old) set of the Oxford Learning Tree books.
I've noticed that the the old OLT book have both "stages" and colours "bands", and that these overlap, e.g. the yellow band books appears in stages 2, 3, and 4. They've changed this in more recent editions, but it's the old edition that we have.
I guess the main question is: What is the difference between band and stage in the old OLD system? Someone told me that increasing bands indicate complexity (e.g. length and complexity of sentences) whereas increasing stages indicate harder and harder vocabulary. Is that right?
And, relatedly, should one work one's way through one stage, then the next, or instead follow one band through the various stages, and then the next band?
I could make this all much easier by buying the Collins' books, but it seems a shame not to make use of the old ORT books given we've got them.
(I was going to ask whether there is a way of mapping Collins onto the old ORT system, but, given the above, my guess it there isn't!)
Thanks so much for any advice!