Is this a reading problem?

[TheAvocadoOfWisdom]

DS1 is in Y1. He can read very fast and fluently BUT he often makes mistakes - skipping words, mixing up what/that and when/then and how/now, and sometimes reverses the order of a pair of words "said Sam" instead of "Sam said".

He's on a reasonably high book band, but he still does make these mistakes say 5-6 times in a 32-page book, or more if he's tired. Is this a problem or is it normal at this stage? He also finds it hard to read words in block capitals. It's odd, because he learned using phonics so he should be able to sound out the words in capitals, but he sometimes struggles or hesitates with things that are relatively simple.

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I think it's normal. Have you tried to ask him to slow down or would that affect his fluency a lot?

Sam said or Said Sam doesn't affect meaning.
Can he correct himself? Does he stop and go back if he realises it doesn't make sense?
DS1 also does this kind of thing. But he'll also say what he expects to see and then corrects himself and gets flustered and annoyed.
Think it's all part of learning

The phonics ds learnt were all lower case by the way.
Capitals in general will take a bit more thinking time as it's not what he's used to reading. Perhaps?!

I personally think that accuracy is more important than fluency at this stage. Fluency will develop with practice and experience, but inaccuracy is a very hard habit to break once it becomes established.

There are surely two aspect to reading. One reading for pleasure; the other is reading for learning or information. While some inaccuracy may not hamper reading for pleasure (though it does seem disrespectful to an author, who has carefully crafted what they have written, to ignore their carefully chosen words and phrases just to 'get the gist' of what they have written. And, isn't part of the pleasure of reading a well written text the appreciation of the skill with words which has produced it?) but in reading for learning inaccuracy could seriously affect understanding.

As he has another 10 years at least in education (15 if you are looking at A levels and University) in which reading for learning will play an important part I think that a bit of insistence on accuracy now would stand him in good stead for the rest of his educational career...

There is really no particular virtue in very fast reading; problems only arise if reading is so slow that he cannot keep pace with classwork or process exam questions quickly enough. From what you say I don't think he'll have that problem

More rapid recognition of uppercase letters will also come with practice, but you could help him with practice at home if you feel it could be a significant problem.

he still does make these mistakes say 5-6 times in a 32-page book, or more if he's tired.
Seems mainly a tiredness problem to me.

Does he ever make such mistakes if u listen to him read in the morning (weekends) rather than after school?

thank you. I shall be a bit more insistent on accuracy. School have let him have lime books but I will get him to slow down and read them properly, or else ask for him to be put back a level or two.