Ruddy ORT again - can I ask for opinions please?

[Thelioninwinter]

I have searched to see if anyone else has had anything similar but couldn't find anything.

I have DD2 (6 in May) who is in Y1 and reading level 4/5 (we've had maybe 4 level 5 books in the last week). OK, she's not amazing and concentration could be better but she's been on that level since Sept 2012.

We've read the ORT books at home together, we read fiction and non-fiction anyway, she is interested but not confident and guesses/mucks about a lot although once I am firm with her, her reading becomes quite fluent. I suspect she reacts the same way at school so may give the impression of being less capable than she is/could be.

Parent's evening in 2 weeks times, my cynical alert re the new level books is beeping as tbh she hasn't improved in 6 months.

Whenever I ask her how often someone reads with her, she seems unable to tell me, the reading record is never filled in by the school and her teacher is smiley and elusive. 2nd NQT teacher btw.

I have up until now carried on with things but this is focusing my attention now. I'm asking for opinions really ahead of parents evening.

What do you think? Is this/could it be utterly normal to stagnate in this way? Any experiences? Am I being unnecessarily cynical re parents evening? Could I do anything else?

Thanks.

I doubt my ds would be able to answer the question "how often does someone read with you?" He's in year 1. I don't think my dd in year 4 would be able to answer that either, because it's a bit open unless it's totally consistant week by week. I'd probably get an answer along the lines of: "I read with Mrs X last week, or was she away. Anyway I sometimes read with her. I like reading with her. Mr. Y does reading sometimes on Mondays, he didn't this week because we had Mrs. Z instead and A's mummy came in to do reading with some people...."

As a general rule he's read if his book is changed, which, in his case is twice a week. Occasionally only once.

I doubt they've gone "parents' evening = book level up". It's probably she's finished that level so has gone up. And if you feel that she hasn't improved, well, there isn't a huge difference imo between level 4 and level 5. But also children usually improve gradually. So you don't notice the improvement because it's gradual.