What level Oxford reading tree is your recep. child on?

[curiousgeorge]

Ds is 5(in reception) and on level 2 xtra story packs. I think he's about average in his class. What are everyone elses reception kids on?

Thought this might be worth a mention:
As a mother of dd1 aged 8 in year 3 and DD2 aged 4 who is to strt reception in September:

DD1 was fab at reading from a very early age - But they do need "breadth" to their reading as well as depth. During reception and the first term in year 1 she shot upwards through the stages and them seemed to playeau for quite a long time. Reading 3 different schemes at each level may have slowed her down but actually improved her reading, vocab and understanding immensly.

What i ment to say that after she plateaued for a while the schhol introduced 3 reading schmes at each level - this may have slowed her upward progress down but greatly increased her fluency, expression., vocab and understanding.
She now has a reading age of 12.4

I go in to listen to the children read in my ds's reception class. I would say that most are on level 1 - 2, a handful are on level 3, a couple have only just moved on from the flashcards. So its quite a big range.

With regards to our school, we will allow them to go onto the next book when they are able to read the key words when not in context, as so many children are able to memorise the words from the pictures. Only last week I had one little boy able to read from his book looking out the window

Ellbell - So much seems to depend on the school IMHO. My ds1 is in Reception and is also on ORT level 1+. He is reading the extra stories - completely forgotten what they're called but nothing to do with the Magic Key characters. At the beginning of the year he used to get one book a week but now seems to have the same book for weeks at a time. However, his teacher has told me that he is very good at literacy work. He can read and spell the 40+ key words and also many other words too. There is far more to Reception literacy work than just the ORT books so don't worry too much about which level your dd is on. FWIW I'm a SAHM and that has made absolutely no difference to the reading level ds1 is on. I think someone on MN once described the ORT as the Oxford Racing Tree as there are a lot of parents who think it's a race to get to the next level. IMHO it's more important that a child is at the right level for them.

Ds1's class read to either the teaching assistant, the teacher or the LSA. It is the teacher who decided when the child should move up to the next level. Ds1 used to read to an adult once a week but sometimes there is a gap of weeks in between.

Ooops! Just re-read that and forgot to make it clear that I wasn't talking about anyone on here when I mentioned the racing.

we get 2 ORT books a week (one on wed for thursday and one on friday for monday) for dd to read to us. She also gets a library book on a Monday for a week and a 'book corner' book every night which we can read to her or if it's simple enough, her to us (but that's her choice and if she doesn't want to read it then we happily read to her).

From her reading diary, I can see she reads to other people about once in every 2 weeks although sometimes it's more often. Her reading is quite advanced so I know from speaking to her teacher that she reads less to the teacher than some of the others but she gets extra teacher help and encouragement with her writing which is her weak point.

dd1 is in reception and has a mixture of ORT and those odd Jelly and Bean books. I think she's just finished stage 2? Anyway her last book was Biffs Aeroplane if that makes any sense. She gets a book a night and reads it to me and then to the TA the next day - they decide whether she needs it back again or can get the next one. She has a brilliant memory and can read the book fluently after she has read it once not sure whether she'd know the words in context tbh.

I am a teaching assistant in Reception and have been doing this job for 5 years.
Our children have no more than 3 books a week. One of our children is on ORT stage 8 and some are still using flash cards so it varies immensely. I change all the childrens books but it is the teacher who decides if anyone is to move up. We do seem to have one or two mums who are really competitive, but not many.
We often get the children to read random words from their books, so as to check they have not just memorised the story. The children all get a chance to read to the teacher and also have class reading time and library lesson.
We do so much more in reception though, with topic work, numeracy, for instance ours are learing number sentences ATM and computer class. Then PE and singing. To be honest, once I started working in a school I realised how much my own children had to do and it was a real eye-opener.

Message withdrawn

Is anyone else reading this thread & thinking "Am I right slapper that I don't know the answer to the question? Did you all have the answer ready to hand on the tip of your tongue?"

I don't know what level ORT my son is, in fact, I don't even know which reading system(s) the school uses. I would hazard a guess that DS can just about read 5 of those 45 words they are supposed to try to learn in Reception. His teacher is very happy with his progress so I guess he must be at least average in his class.

Goldfish -- what you said about memorising the story intrigues me. DS's teacher said that they just wanted him to learn the gist of the story & retell it partly in his own words, that's all they want; they don't want us to push the child learning to read individual words. But we get comments in his reading book like "Beautiful reading", when I am 99.9% sure DS can't really read the words. I feel like he's getting praised for reciting the story verbatim, as though he were reading it, exactly what we were told not to do. ????

Question about Oxford Reading Tree.. reading through this thread I am wondering if some schools do not do the whole ORT syllabus and whether this could be confusing the issue re: levels our children are on?

DD is in Y1 and is on Stage 3 of the ORT books she is reading. And I am talking about the books featuring Mum, Dad, Kipper, Chip and Biff (poor kids!).. Floppy the dog etc! Are these what other people's children reading ORT are getting? Or are their other varieties of ORT?

I too would be a tad alarmed by this thread if I didn't know from experience that DD is reading perfectly adequately for her age.. and much better than DS1 (now almost 13) was at this age (and who, I must add, can read perfectly well now!) DD is not the most advanced in her class at reading.. but I can see her making progress by the month! I know nobody on this thread is intentionally making anyone else worry but it is very easy to imagine that your child has a problem when we are all making comparisons. Also, DS1 is a practical chap.. and whilst his reading is more than adeqate to get by, he shines in others areas.

In a nutshell, I really think its best not to panic at this stage. As someone said, YR is a minefield of different abilties (with reading being fairly low priority at this age) and some children will be almost a whole year older than others which makes a huge difference. DS1 is a July 'baby' and try as I might I could make little progress with his reading until suddenly, at the beginning of Y2 it just 'clicked'.

Children in YR are regularly assessed as well and parents will be informed if children are considered to need any special help.. and even then this is nothing to panic about and is just there to ensure that nobody slips through the net. A children getting extra help in YR will not neccessarily need it in Y1.

SJ x

ZebraX, I have worked with several different reception teachers and they do differ in their approach slightly. The teacher I am with at the moment chooses random words as she just wants to see if the child recognises the word out of context. If they don't its nothing to worry about. Each child gets the main words from each book to take home to learn separately, and some of our children have repeated books they have had a few weeks before and their Mums have been happy about that.
We do have the children in ability groups, but it is general all round ability, and some of our high achievers in the top group are quite a way behind some of our average achievers with their reading books. They are so young and I hate seeing them put in groups already, but both the parents and children are not aware of the different abilty groups even though they know the children are grouped. My ds1 was in a very low group all through first school up until yr 3 but now in Middle school is in top groups in all subjects. I really wouldn't worry at this age. Some children are nearly a year younger than the others and they all 'get it' at different times.
The best thing to do is to encourage your children to read many different things such as leaflets and so on and this all helps. But just don't worry, if your child needs help you would be made aware of it.

SleepyJess, my DS3 is also in Y1 and on Level 3 ORT and I have no worries about his reading at all. My two elder DSs were at similar levels at his age. They are now in Y5 and Y6 and are fantastic readers.
I think at their school they move them on really slowly (and there seem to be about a zillion books in each level) but I'm quite happy with this as I know they get there eventually

Thanks everyone and (and sorry because I should have said this before) sorry to curiousgeorge for hijacking your thread.

It's clear from everyone's replies that all schools treat learning to read in very different ways, and it seems that mine is particularly thorough. I have calmed down now and can see that my dd is happy and making progress and is keen to learn. She was only 5 last week, so I reckon that's a good start.

I feel a lot calmer now!

DSs school doesn't use any sort of reading scheme whatsoever. They didn't make a big song and dance (or any song and dance actually) about the 45 words they're meant to be able to recognise by the end of reception either. They don't get reading books to bring home other than the ones they have chosen themselves from the class library. I have no idea how they teach them to read but the majority of the children get it by the middle of Y1. I think they teach them how to read rather than how to recognise specific words if that makes sense.

Hi. My daughter is in Reception and reading at Stage 3. She finds the Floppy's Phonics books that she brings home very easy to read and I put a comment to this effect in her reading book.Her teacher then gave me a Snapdragons book home (same Stage) and I was wondering if anyone knew whether these books were more difficult than the Floppy's Phonics books? Many thanks.

Ds 5.4 yrs is on stage 5, he loves reading but struggles with comprehension sometimes.

DS - aged 4.10 - is on colored bands rather than numbered bands. He's on orange so not sure if this is good or bad. He's only just becoming slightly enthusiastic about reading himself so I'm seeing that as a positive.

Zombie thread alert

The original thread is 8 years old - her child is in Secondary school now!

hehehe, I 'm back up there in another incarnation, too. Didn't realise I was so clueless about DS then as I am about DS now.

Hi lljkk I'm sure you were on the same anti/post natal gang as me (Feb 08) hope you and your Ds are well.

:)