Sorry you probably get this all the time, Question about the oxford tree reading books

[Hai1988]

Hi I was just wondering on average what age do dc read stage 5 books?

DD is on stage 5, she is 5, why do you ask?

I ask because DS age 5.2 has just been put on to these books, while his class mates are on 1+ I just wanted to know the average tbh

at home my DD aged 5.7 reads stage 5 & 6 but in school they've only just given her stage 3 even though i've been telling them for ages she knows these books and even says they are easy :( they only do reading with them once a week and this is not 121 either :(

I would say to them again that these books she is being given are way to easy and she is not learning from them.

DS was on 1 and 1+ and was finding them very very easy, but I didnt know weather to say anything to the teacher as it was only the first term and didnt want to seem pushy.

Turns out teacher noticed today that DS's reading was very good and as i have said has now moved up to stage 5, teacher said to say if books are to easy now.

Thing is are they suposed to be able to read the books with no trouble or are they supposed to be challenged a little bit?

I was talking to a teacher friend the other day and she said that it's the comprehension that's important. So even though my 5 yr old can read and work out most books, even ones much much too old for him, he won't always understand it.

So she said to ask lots of questions aferwards, that way you can see if it's just reading or understanding as well.

I also feel my dd could move up a stage or two as she finds them easy, i asked at parents evening before half term if she thought the same and she said they dont like the children to skip stages because they wont understand the story and learn the new charactors sp?.

OK thanks for the advice Dolly

I find it varies very much from school to school as well, not just child to child. DS's school are very pushy with reading- the top level is on level 8 ORT in his year (year 1). He is in the middle group and on level 6.

A friend's school has the children on level 3 in the same year.

lollyheart that sounds like a load of crap to me re; not missing any stages out, surely a good teacher will look at each child individually and tailor the books to them - my DD missed out two NC book bands, green and orange, because her level of skill was beyond what these books could offer; roll on a year she is on the highest level in her class (because she told me, they all change books in the library) and reads constantly at home. I would question the need for every level, poor kids, ORT are bad enough as it is.

With comprehension, do they need to be able to summarise the whole book or just understand parts of it. I think ds finds summarising the longer ones difficult (stage 8 or 9) but the vocab is too easy.

Ooh good question, mcnn. DDs teacher recently said that her focus with books now was being able to summarise the whole book, as well as answering questions/predicting etc along the way, a skill she said takes time to develop and is what she is concentrating on with DD and another child in the class.

What year is your DC BTW?

I got the impression that the child needed to understand what they've just read so page by page would tell you that.

Ds2 can easily read quite difficult words with no concept of their meaning. I guess the way they are taught to read means they can work a word out.

Year 1 lovecheese.
He is reading the text very easily at this level, with fab intonation and good comprehension of what he's reading but does struggle to summarise the whole book when he's waded through say 32 pages of it.

My dd is 4 and towards the end of stage 5. She also reads them easily, but I have been told she is advanced in her year group (reception) and she does guided reading in year one.

We just read more challenging material at home (we have just been reading 'The Twits') and leave the ORT for school. I don't worry about it too much to be honest.

"I got the impression that the child needed to understand what they've just read so page by page would tell you that."

I disagree with this actually - page by page doesn't show understanding of the plot. It is also a skill to be able to pull out the important parts of the story once you have finished it. Page by page allows a child who hasn't understood completely what they have read to look at the pictures and guess the answers to the questions asked.

They don't need to remember the plot in detail, but pick out the important parts which make the story 'work'. So, it doesn't matter that Biff told Chip to get in the car, but it does matter that they went on an adventure to wherever and this is what went wrong and this is how they solved the problem and got back.

Galena - what you said is spot-on regarding summarising a book, it's sorting the wheat from the chaff, and if DDs teacher is correct is a skill that needs to be learnt. DD has 1:2 once a week to concentrate on this, am interested to know why only two of them at parents evening.

Galena that's a good point, I'm not a teacher so I am only reiterating what my friend said.

I think I'm going to ask my ds2 questions every few pages to see if he understands, then at the end as well.

So how can I help ds summarise the whole book?
It seems quite hard when it's quite a long book.

Good idea to story board. Thanks for that.
If I ask him what happened in a shorter book he'd be fine it's just that by now they're pretty long and it's harder to take a step back I guess but that's what he needs to be doing.

I dont know who the what year is DC in love cheese, but DS is in reception, this is his first term and he is only doing half days at the mo.

Then I really would relax Hai!

just relised that my last post made no scence.

I am relaxed, just wanted to know the avrange