Year 1 reading levels

[RobEmily]

I’m wondering what teachers are looking for in deciding if to move children up book levels.

I know I will get a lot of answers telling me it doesn’t matter and to let him to at his own pace, but my eldest is dyslexic so I guess I’m looking for signs with my son and worrying about missing something.

My son is in year 1 and entered the year on yellow having been there for a term in reception.

He reads to us every single day at home without fail. We have started to read blue books at home over half term as we had read all the yellows we have at home and at the library. Plus these are the sounds he is learning, and he is coping really well on blue at home.

He reads most three sound and regular / year 1 tricky words by sight. He will sound out and blend longer words with confidence, doesn’t need much prompting at all other than occasionally with a split digraph and has good comprehension of the stories.

I read with the class so I know at the start of the year all but three children were on yellow or lower. I now know all but 9 children (30 in class) are on yellow or lower. Which puts him in the bottom third of the class.

I can see from the reading log that they were assessed last week and he was marked as not being ready to move up but there’s no notes for why in the book.

I read with children at his level and blue level and am trying to work out why he hasn’t been moved up. He is more confident than most of yellow and reads more by sight, but probably a slightly slower pace than most of the blues.

What is it that teachers are looking for to move them up? And yes I know it doesn’t matter, but as said above, I’m worrying I’m missing something / looking at it with blinkers on because of his sister’s dyslexia. I think he’s doing better than she was but actually she was on the same level at this point so it’s worrying me.

I used to work as a ta in a primary school.

not all primary schools assess the same way.

the way we did it was there was an assessment book at the end of each level

the child read it to me and I kept a record of what they read - so I have the text and tick each word that is right, cross each one that is wrong, mark if retried, write down if possible what they actually said if wrong.

they then needed to get 85% correct to move up.

so it could be as simple as he just made a couple of mistakes on the assessment book on that day.

It doesn’t seem to be marked as I have the entire reading folder when I go in and there was a scrap of paper with a list of names on it saying “ready to move up?” Someone had just been through the list and ticked or put a dot next to each child, no commentary.

There is then a separate divider for each child in the file and nothing had been written on any of the pages in the file in relation to that list for any of the children. The last time my son had anything written on his file was a month ago where it just said “sounding out longer words” nothing else.

He has only been read with twice according to the divider since the start of the term. But obviously was also read with last week to decide not to move him up.

I could see some of the top kids on green had assessment papers in their files where they’d done like a mini comprehension test on what they’d read. But the kids lower down just have the sheets I fill in when I read with them and then sometimes another TA or teacher fills in when they read with them.

Is it worrying to be on yellow ORT at this point in the year? Looking online it appears they should be on blue by now.

Are they doing Read Write Inc (as you’re talking about colours)? If so, his speed will be the reason he can’t move to blue if he knows all his set one, two and three sounds. Blue and grey are once they can decode fluently and are basically for practising pace and fluency. If he’s still decoding words or slow then he won’t quite be ready. Yellow at this stage in Year one is not a concern at all though - the aim is to be off phonics by the end of year 2 so he’s got ages!

I don’t think they do Read Write Inc, most of the books have Bug Club Phonics on them. The colours follow the ORT colour scheme, so pink, red, yellow, blue, green, orange.

I think my concern is more that he is in the bottom nine of the class, and only 2 are lower.