? levels ? reading ages etc

[Blethermouse]

sorry if all been covered before on here but have school report for ds in Yr 4, happy with general comments .
However with my older dcs I used to be told things like reading ages and levels in non sats years... nothing concrete in this one like that.
Is this usual and can I ask for such things.. ds says they have tests etc but they/we don't get results.

do you have levels and RAs in ur reports ?

Have never been told reading ages for my DD's. As was pointed out on a thread a couple of days ago schools are only legally bound to give out results at the end of year 2 and year 6, think it is up to them in other years BUT I think you have a right to ask if you want to know.

yearning that is really useful. Thanks

yearning I did that for fun with my 7 year-old. Think she thought I was mad

That sounds interesting. I've never had reading levels for Ds I do not hold out on getting them either.

Is the burt reading test any good though? Doesn't it wildly, wildly overestimate (i.e. all kids come out above their actual age)

I think the thing to bear in mind, penelopethefrog is that a reading test like that only goes on whether a child can decode a word; it does not pay any heed to meaning or context.

tested 5.8 yo DS1 this afternoon - reading age of 8.4 and he's only on turquoise band

3.11 yo DS2 has a reading age of 6.9 and he's on blue band. I'd expect most children of nearly 7 to be on a lot more than blue band.

And they do understand the words - the first 30 are very easy and the next 30 contain mostly everyday words. I'd expect the test significantly inflates scores for most kids.

we are told at parents teacher meeting night.

At my dcs previous school we were given a SATs score every year, this school doesn't but gives a Mark for attainment and one for effort, but also a reading age, a spelling age.

I take all RA scores with a massive pinch of salt. The Burt test is only decoding and not comprehension. Reading is a very complex skill, especially reading the English language. And it also takes a very long time to truly perfect this skill. Relax, you can if I child is struggling. Just ask the class teacher.

Penelopethefrog - why are you testing a 5.8 yo and a 3.11 yo using a test for 6.4 yo?

letthembe I did it out of curiousity as it was mentioned on this thread :). Didn't realise it was for a 6.4yo. Don't think there are too many comprehension issues with words like "girl", "water", "village", "sad" for a 3yo really.

No but reading is about comprehension and enjoyment. There are many more reading age tests out there that are comprehension based.

no one should just use the burt test to assess the reading age of a child....far too blunt!!!

wouldn't it be easier just to go into your school and ask the teacher?

DS was a very early and avid reader, as were his bio dad and I. Because I found his rapid aquisition of reading both startling and fascinating (nature vs nurture etc etc), I used the various free decoding tests knocking around - Burt's, Schonell and the San Diego Quick Assessment (and another one I can't remember). Yes, they only assess decoding skills, but his results were absolutely consistent across the different tests, so I figured they were pretty accurate assessments of a discrete skill-set.

Interesting on the geek-level. And meaningful insofar as it showed me how much phonic knowledge he had acquired.

Just looked at the Burt Test and I don't think I need to test DS to know where he will be. I read with DS (Y1) every day, I know what sort of books he can read, so I can predict where he would stumble. Besides, I don't really want to put DS through getting 10 words wrong, that would be frustrating for him.

Gadid - I think that is a very sensible approach. I don't test my children and I have a whole of resources at my finger tips. I leave that to the school and I concentrate on the joy and purpose of learning at home.