Reading: teacher says dd is 14 months below age (6)help!

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My dd is in year 1. I have been to the parents evening tonight and her teacher says she was tested in September and came out at level 1c. When I asked what that meant she said it was she was 14 months below her age. Seeing as she is only just 6 can this be correct? What standard should she be able to do.

We get reading books every day and I try to do it every day but if she is tired I don't push it. Now I am worried I am not doing enough. Also I try to get her to sound out the words but then I know the teacher has said look at the pictures and guess. Is this right? As I had a very rushed 10 minutes with the teacher I felt I came away with more questions than answers.

Any advice on how to improve things please?

WHat sort of books is she reading? Do you use a reading scheme? If so, what level is she reading on those? Do you think she is coping with the books she is reading?

Things to try - get some of those magnetic words to practise making sentences. Read EVERYTHING you can - road signs etc, so it's not 'it's reading time', it's just part of your life.

The business about looking at the pictures is the way ds has learnt - get her to say the first letter, think what sound it is, then think about the picture and the context to work out what the word could be.

My ds1 is year 1 as well, and the range of abilities is enormous. I think ds1 is toward the high end, but his reading came all at once - he suddenly clicked and went from being able to work out some words to being able to read anything virtually overnight. Obviously he is still improving loads, but it was a bit like learning to swim or ride a bike - one day he couldn't read, the next day he could.
The only other advice is to make sure she has stuff to read that she enjoys. We're lucky in that ds1 LOVES the magic key stories which they use at school, but if he didn't I would get a stock of stories he liked, and was therefore motivated to read. He also really likes the Magic Key magazines which I think are really good.

Hope this is of some help!

If the lowest score in my Y1 class was a 1C I would be rather pleased, so it is all relative. We do test them for levels, and the higher end of my class is 1B. Children do learn to read at very different rates, and I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. I think the most important thing is the attitude to reading - that it is an enjoyable thing, not a chore that you would rather not do. It sounds like you are doing the right thing with her. When we do guided reading in school, I do encourage children to use picture cues, as well as sound out the words. That is, if the sentence said, "I see the tree" with a picture of a tree, I would ask the child to point to each word, sound out the ones that she didn't know, and then if they got stuck on the word 'tree', I would say the sentence again "I see the..." and point to the picture.
Is your dd able to sound words out by saying each letter sound and then pushing the sounds together to get the word? That is, c-a-t makes 'cat'? Does she know her high frequency words? If you want to do more, you can get a list of the Reception and Year 1 high frequency words and work together on them. Not necessarily as a grind, but more in a casual way. It is useful for you to know them so you can point them out when you are out and about, or in books.
(Ps I wish all my parents were as motivated as you!)

Well, I don't understand that either. The 1c sounds like a National Curriculum level. The NC levels start at level 1 and are subdivided into sub-levels - 1c, 1b, 1a, then 2c, 2b, 2a, etc. As far as I can tell, the mythical "average" child should start Year 1 at level 1 (most likely 1c or 1b) and should finish on 1a or 2c.

Children are 'supposed' to attain a 2b by the end of Year 2, which your daughter would be right on track to do if she is a 1c in reading at the start of Y1. Apparently, children are 'supposed' to progress by 2 sub-levels a year - so from 1c to 1a in Year 1, and from 1a to 2b in Year 2, for example.

Please correct me, primary school teachers. I also find it very hard to understand how a child who's only completed one year of school could be 14 months behind - she had only just started school 14 months ago!

So what are these levels 1B, 1C then? Is there a link somewhere to read about them?

Thanks for that tortoiseshell. She is on level 2 so I thought that was OK. I've not heard of the magic key is it a magazine you can get in the newsagents?

It sounds as if she as been given an age standardised test, such as the salford, to give a specific reading age.

1c in Year 1 sounds pretty good to me, I've got some 1c readers in my Y2 class!

JenniferSofia so is level 1c really 14months behind her age (just 6)?

We have flashcards which I try to make a game of but I must admit I haven't done much of lately as I thought we should concentrate on the books. I just felt a bit gutted tonight like I am going wrong somehow.

Magic Key is basically Oxford Reading Tree - ds1's school uses these books along with Ginn All Aboard books. There is also a tv series plus the magazine which is widely available in newsagents - this has stories, activites etc. It's Kipper, Biff, Chip, Floppy, Wilf, Wilma, Nadim etc.

If your levels are the same as ours, then I think I probably would be doing a bit extra reading with her - does her class have a learning skills assistant? If so, could you ask for her/him to give your dd a bit of extra time? Sometimes a bit of extra one to one time can work wonders! But just keep it fun!

Do you mean she is Level 2 Oxford Reading Tree ?If so then the Magic Key stories come in at level 5 of that scheme so she'd need a fair bit of support to cope with the comics, although you could do it together. It might take some fo the fun out of it when she does reach those books though. If she was in Reception last year they should have completed the Early Years curriculum and the formal "goals" chart to gauge your dd's progress by the end of the year, which should have highlighted if she were way off the norm. Presumably she is one of the oldest in the class, so perhaps 10 months or more older than our dd who is an August b'day for instance, so I'd imagine within the ability range of the class nonetheless. Were you able to ask if the school offer any one-to-one or small group work to focus more on the basics ?

Her school do not use oxford reading tree it is Ginn books. No problems were highlighted in Reception she was marked as achieving all the early learning goals. This was why i was surprised tonight.

To be honest, I don't really know the correspondence of level to reading age. The levelling is as singersgirl describes it. I really wouldn't worry, I don't think you are doing anything wrong!

No, sorry, that isn't exactly true. What I meant was, I don't understand why your dd's teacher said that she was 14 months below her age. I consider 1C to be somewhat normal for 5 yr old, and the P levels would be more reception age. Unless she is using a different system...

I might be wrong but it sounds like the reading level has been determined by teacher assessment in a task or by the words she can tackle in conetx in a reading book, but the reading age has been determined by a standardised reading test (we use NfER tests).

These are tests of about 40 questions - at your dd's age it would probably involve pictures too) and the makr she gets out of 40 or 45 or whetever is sued along with her chronological (actual) age to determine a 'reading age'.

To be honest, these are just 1 way of assessing a child and should not be used as the only benchmark. A child only has to answer one question right or wrong by fluke and their reading age can differ by as much as 6 months.

With any luck they will do this kind of test agin next year and only when you have the results of that one can you see what progress she's made over 12 months as it's comparing like for like. Hope this is clear. And again, I'm only guessing this is what's happened. I work at KS3 but it sounds like some of the methods of assessment are similar

context - sorry! typing too fast for my sausage fingers to keep up

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In some countries they don't even start to learn to read until age 6... My ds is not at this age/stage yet but my instinct is that the (IMO slightly strange) precision of the statement 'she is 14 months behind her age' about a 6yo doesn't have to mean much. Take on the suggestions in this thread, read lots to her, have books around etc. etc. - but try not to worry.

Ask her teacher what support they are going to give her. Practice phonics with her as well as reading. Share books e.g. read a bedtime story. Encourage her to describe the pictures and this will enable her to use them as clues for words as well as sounding out.