Please, anyone have experience with PM reading scheme in Y1

[strictlovingmum]

DD has just started Y1 and had brought in books called PM stage 4 and 5, I haven't seen these books before and DD finds them a bit boring and repetitive.
In reception they were reading ORT and Jolly Readers, and DD seems to prefer those books, also DD finished YR ort stage 4 scratching on 5, but these PM books seem a lot easier, Does anyone have experience of those books and what is the purpose of them?

Hi
PM Readers are from New Zealand and are graded based on the 'reading recovery' levels (in Australia we go on RR Levels too.) A RR level 4 or 5 would be approx mid way through Kindergarten, so if your child is in their second year of school I would expect an average, middle class child who speaks English at home to be at about RR10-12ish and a good reader could be in the late teens. The Reading recovery levels go up to 30, which is about what a kid in NSW should be at by year 3 (or thereabouts).
The PM readers are lovely, usually have cute Maori children in the pictures!

Thanks for thatslapdashsusie DD is just turned 5 and is Y1 in UK, Would you happen to know is level 5(red) appropriate for her? or Is she slightly behind?

My dd was given some PM books as part of her Reading Recovery Scheme, which she was put on in Year 1 (she is Yr 2 now). She came home a few weeks into the scheme with PM+6 books. Apparently the books give a different phonic approach than the ORT Biff and Chip books, so they are good to mix in with the norm.

I think the Level 6 was what was an average achievement for a child just a little way into Year 1. However, don't read too much into the levels, it could be that this particular book has elements in it that your child could do with going over.

I would have been very pleased if my dd had been on Level 5 just coming out of Reception!

Kate

Kate, thank you very much, you have eased my mind, it was more of not understanding why they changed DD's scheme and put her on red level that freaked me a little
I get it now, it is different colour coded reading scheme altogether, that contains lot more cvc words, thanks again

Just note that neither ORT nor Reading Recovery have a 'phonic approach'.(unless the ORT is Floppy's Phonics or their new phonic scheme) They are 'Look and Say' repetitive texts. designed for memorising words as 'wholes'.

Again today, another PM book, DD found it hideous to read it to me, complained al lot "this is too easy" and boring.
Should I let this run it's course, or perhaps have word with teacher?
I see no point in this, at school in YR teachers spent best part of the year to teach those kids to read phonetically and how to decode, and they are feeding them "sight reading"

Individual teachers have a fair amount of automony over what reading materials they provide for their children. I know a number of frustrated EY teachers who have given their pupils a good grounding in phonics, only to see them given 'look & say' materials when they move on from them. Unless the HT or Literacy co-ordinator is determined on using good decodable books for reinforcing and building on phonic foundations and makes it a matter of policy to be implemented rigorously children may well experience a mix of methods.

It takes a brave and well informed parent to challenge this mix because, of course, the teacher is the 'expert' and what do mere mothers know...?

You just summarised how I feel maizieD, everything we read at home DD decodes it herself, phonics are the ones for her, and to be honest with you she sailed trough her learning how to read, unlike DS 16 years ago who struggled at the beginning with reading thanks to "look and say" it took a while to bring him around. I am I know it's not the the end of the world, but at the same time I wouldn't like to see DD put off reading because of this.

Would I challenge her, probably yes.
Thanks to phonic way of reading at the foundation stage DD is not only a good reader, but she writes very well for her age, seldom ever makes the mistakes in her spellings, because she has been shown how to listen for the sounds in words and put them on paper, she is well into her graphemes and even graphemes in the middle of the word she gets it right, surely teachers are aware by now that majority of English language is perfectly decodable, hence no need for "look and say"

DS likes the PM readers. First read he tends to need a bit of help with the non phoneticly decodable words but on second reading is quite fluent and happy to talk about the story and how people feel/ why they do things and starting to read with expression.

There really is no such thing as a non phonetically decodable word. There are, however, many words which cannot be decoded without extensive knowledge of the alphabetic code. Reading schemes based on 'look and say' take no account at all of how much code knowledge the child reading it is likely to have. So they are full of words which are beyond the phonic knowledge of a beginning or novice reader.

Another one today, well DD read it in the car on the way home.
I have decided to let it go on for a little longer, and in the mean time just read with her what we want to read, books we have at home, and from the local library.

your quite right maisy- I didn't put that well.

"Those words DS can not yet phoneticly decode"

You are forgiven UniS