Oxford Reading Tree

[MrsN100]

I'm a bit confused with this. Dd is going into Y1 and her school has given guidelines as to where she should be. They have said she should be at Stage 5 but on the site it's all described in Levels?

Hiya as far as I remember from when our school used it stages in the oxford reading tree is ages so stage 5 is 5 -6 years of age ability

Thank you. Do you know what Level or book band colour this is?

Stages are the 'read at home ones'
Look at the text on this link rather than the table and under each age they have the stages at the end after the levels

home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/oxford-reading-tree-levels/

Actually, Stage 5 (Oxford Reading Tree does have different series) is very different to Level 5 and is aimed at children in Year 2-3. Double check with the school as Level 5 is more aimed at end of Reception Level.
home.oxfordowl.co.uk/bookshop/read-with-oxford/read-with-oxford-stage-5/

It's massively confusing, level 5 and stage 5 are totally different, and DD's school sends home 3 books per week from Oxford level x and then one other non-fiction from some other scheme level something totally different.

All I have gleaned from this system is that if you are playing an exciting computer game, watching a terrifying film, or visiting an ancient castle, make sure that you do not have a key in your hand at the time. If it begins to glow, drop the bugger.

@KarmaViolet

It's massively confusing, level 5 and stage 5 are totally different, and DD's school sends home 3 books per week from Oxford level x and then one other non-fiction from some other scheme level something totally different.

All I have gleaned from this system is that if you are playing an exciting computer game, watching a terrifying film, or visiting an ancient castle, make sure that you do not have a key in your hand at the time. If it begins to glow, drop the bugger.

😂👍 been there. Spot on with the description of the story plots. Thank you @KarmaViolet

I think stage 5 is green book band :) which is middle of Year 1 level.

My 5 year old loves the magic key stories, but bizarrely is not at all keen on the ORT Project X books where the lad shrinks... seems a similar premise to me... but there you... kids are weird like that :P

If it's ok to jump on this thread - how does Songbirds fit in? DD is on Stage 4, which is denoted by a green colour (colour may be random, I've no idea) - how does that correlate to other schemes?

Also confused. A friend handed down 2 different sets of the Oxford books to us where the levels don't seem to tally.

This is the table I use to find the bands.

That makes sense of it. Thanks Nuggetnugget

I can see that the numbers/colours in column 3 tie in with the Julia Donaldson books.

Thanks everyone, yes it is confusing! They specifically said Stage 5 and that seemed massively ahead. This is a prep school so I wasn't sure if that's normal? ORT are in levels so I was confused about Stages. We are doing JD Songbirds instead and I was trying to see where DD is, she has just started Stage 4 (Green books). I'm not sure what that compares to on ORT.

My advice would just to keep reading plenty - don't worry too much about bands over the summer.
Get her to the library or use magazines she likes. Just read plenty.

I can see that the numbers/colours in column 3 tie in with the Julia Donaldson books.

I’m not sure they do, at least not the set I have here . Argh! I’m trying to order things from Reading Chest and it’s a bit of a shot in the dark at the mo.

It looks like they changed the system at some point!

My set of books are old as they are a hand-me-down from a friend whose DD would have been using them about 4 years ago at a guess and the colours and numbers all tally with that table.

The stories themselves are the same but it looks like they've recategorised them to fit with the 'stages' system on your version rather than levels.

Gah! Thanks ineed, that's a bit clearer at least. I thought I was going mad! I think I'll take DD to the end of the Songbirds series we have and either order in what Songbirds calls Stage 5 + 6, or accept that it's vaguely Green book band and carry on from there with equivalents.

They changed the system a couple of years ago, but it’s quite possible they might still be using the two systems with one being designed for schools and one being designed for patents buying books at home.

home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/oxford-reading-tree-levels/

Yes it seems they are using 2 systems (3 if you include bookbands colours) one for schools andone for parents at home. Not sure what the difference is, since some of them are the same books with different labelling.

Our school has songbird stage 2 in yellow band and stage 1 songbird in book band red.

I have the songbirds books and they go as follows
stage 1 which have purple covers = pink book band
stage 2 which have green covers = red book band
stage 3 which have blue covers = yellow book band
stage 4 which have red covers = blue book band
stage 5 which have yellow covers = green book band
stage 6 which have orange covers = orange book band

Hope that helps! (Why they can't just have the same colour cover as the sodding book band i'll never know!)

hecky - thank you. It looks like yours correlate to the school Songbirds rather than the home Songbirds, given what rafa has said above. I'm going to assume that the home levels are roughly the same rather than the whole thing being a test of parental literacy too!

They are the same books though. Which is what confuses things.

So from the link above it looks like stage 2 covers levels 1+-3
Stage 3&4 cover levels 4-7 and stage 5-6 covers levels 8-11.