Year 1 Reading

[R89Amy]

Hey, my daughter is in year 1. I’ve spoken to her teacher a couple of times regarding her reading. I’ve no idea if she’s below, expected or above where she should be.
She currently has Read Write Inc books at colour Blue. She’s flying though and is getting really bored, so I’ve been requesting a harder book, he said he’d need to speak to other staff, no idea why.
She is almost 6 and has asked for books for Christmas, is the blue level expected for a year 1 child? I don’t want to ruin her confidence getting her something far too tricky

Hiya, light blue is as expected for the start of year 1. Orange/turquoise is about at the end of year 1 so if she's flying through the blue books then she needs upping.
At this sort of stage my little one loved the Isadora Moon books which might be good to try with :)

Also, please please keep requesting and refusing to read the easy books with her, school are reluctant to go further than the stage they think they should be at.

There isn't a turquoise level in RWI and orange is 2 levels below blue. Blue is the second from top level of the scheme. DCs that are on blue at the start of yr1 at my DC's school are working at above expected levels. Their school won't take any DCs off the scheme before the start of yr2, but even so, only a small number will be ready at that point.
RWI, when followed to the letter, has strict criteria to move up that covers writing as well as reading. A common sticking point on the higher levels is the need to read at/above a specified number of words per minute. My DCs' writing was always the bit that held them up, so they also found the books far too easy. We just quickly zipped through the school reading book a couple of times a week, then read our own books the rest of the time.

@SkankingWombat Oh, that's interesting, our school have been working with those colours whilst doing the RWI scheme.
Thank you for that information, I'm gonna ask them why.

Turquoise is the final stage of y1 reading level at my DC's school as well. If I remember right there were light blue and green before that.

Can't you just go to the library so she can choose what she wants to read at home

Not sure why you're leaving it in the hands of her teacher and the school

Different schemes have different colour orders (and some simply use numbers). Many schools can't afford to replace all the books immediately when they move to a new scheme, so will use what they have and match the levels across the schemes/series. This is (I believe) frowned upon under the current fashion as the older books may have the odd grapheme and red word DCs haven't yet been taught. When DC1 was doing phonics, their school still used books from various schemes but stuck their own coloured label around the spine to show the equivalent RWI level more easily. By the time DC2 started reception 2 years later, all had been replaced with RWI books. You can Google comparison charts, but it can get quite confusing as there are so many both old and new.

This is a different reading scheme, blue in Oxford owl doesn't equate to blue RWI. Orange/Turquoise is the end of Y1 expectation.

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/

You can Google RWI vs colour book bands correlation and some schools have already compared and shared the levels.

@R89Amy Blue in RWI is end of expectations for Y1 so your daughter is doing well. RWI gets reassessed and groups reassigned termly so your daughter will have been placed in that level for a reason and won't move on until ready or meeting the criteria at next assessment point, her class will have been split into their respective groups and each will be led by different member of RWI-trained staff so your child's teacher may not be the one leading your daughter's group this term, so that's why they'd have to check with other staff - i.e. the staff member leading her group.

How is her reading at speed? She'll be asked to read a passage in 60seconds probably at the next assessment point and it's speed and accuracy at her level, along with comprehension and early inference of what's been read, that she'll be working on.

I would let her choose books for reading for pleasure at home. Also reading books with/to her that are a bit above her level will still help, she can practise the skills of comprehension and inference in texts that wouldn't necessarily be accessible to her and she'll probably enjoy it more too.

Foster that love of reading at this age!

*reassessed half-termly, I meant to say! Every 6 weeks!

The government insisted that all schools follow an approved synthetic phonics scheme and designated a handful as appropriate. Not all schools could afford to throw out the old books and replace the entire lot, so they may well be used concurrently for a while in many schools.

There are some good suggestions here: books for year 1.