Oxford Reading Tree - what is WRONG with these bucketheads?

[solidgoldbrass]

Do they sit down and work out how to create books that are entirely witless and infuriating on purpose? I mean, as if Biff & Baff & Fucko and their Magic Key weren't tiresome enough, we are now on to Ant and Dec and Dipshit and their magic shrinking watches (The X Project). Stupid stories with no context, no resolution, no sense of character... are they trying to create a generation of book-haters?

surely 'pat the dog' (if memory serves!)

You need Wendy Cope's poem, 'Reading Scheme':

Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.
Jane has a big doll. Peter has a ball.
Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Here is Mummy. She has baked a bun.
Here is the milkman. He has come to call.
Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.

Go Peter! Go Jane! Come, milkman, come!
The milkman likes Mummy. She likes them all.
Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Here are the curtains. They shut out the sun.
Let us peep! On tiptoe Jane! You are small!
Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.

I hear a car, Jane. The milkman looks glum.
Here is Daddy in his car. Daddy is tall.
Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Daddy looks very cross. Has he a gun?
Up milkman! Up milkman! Over the wall!
Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.
Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

He he.

We have the Songbirds books at home which I am having DS read instead of the books coming home from school. Yes they're ORT too - I have no truck with ORT, just sodding bloody Biff, Chip & Kipper.

I so wish DS had some choice. The so-called "literacy" (I use the term loosely) in our area has them with one book for a whole book, at school and at home. Would you credit it? It starts with you having to read the book to them, bearing in mind it's already been read that day at school so DS knows it inside out and upside down already. Then the next day you read it with them and talk about the pictures. The the next day you do something else, I can't quite remember. Then the next day the poor kid finally gets to recite read the book themselves. Thank GOD DS's school saw sense after the parents complained and cut the 4 days of hell down to two. But even so it is too bloody long.

I've now given up doing the reading homework with DS at all as it is damaging him learning to read. When I sat down with him to read the next one in the Songbirds series the other day, he said to me that he couldn't possibly read it because he didn't "know" it yet. That was it. Biff, Chip and Kipper will never ever be read in this house again.

Look and say is the worst idea ever in the history of teaching children to read. It merely gives the illusion of teaching them to read, and that is criminal IMO.

That should have read "literacy scheme" - a region-wide scheme aimed at the bottom of the barrel.

OH dear, I should just start that damned post again. One Book for a whole week

solidgoldbrass is this Helen, Hall Green?

TMM: Eh?

They are reading scheme books - they are not designed to have a plot or character development. They are designed to be simple. The ORT is outdated ... but the kids in my class love them. I give them occasionally because actually I think they are nice stories (no there are better stories out there but most of those will be too complicated for my children to read plus much Iwould love to I haven't time nor energy (because i am on MN) to find suitable picture books ... plus I know the content is going to be age appropriate. All my kids love the time runner books and ask if they can have them - they also love the tree top stories and the non-fiction range ... but bottom line if you were a parent of mine I wouldn't care what you did with your child as long as it was something

ds's school has a huge mix of books, some are ancient i did return a book after ds1had read it & suggested the teacher may like to read it. Not at all PC it refered to the BIg fat boy, last in the race & the big black boy who was new in class.

How I laughed at yours, frogs - but seriously, Peter and Jane WAS just like that!

Biff and Chip et al may not be Stimulation Central but they're a damn sight better than a lot of what went before.

but not as good as what has come after ...they are almost 30 years old now.

Jelly and Bean are good for very beginning readers, cos they are phonically logical. But quite dull. Peter and Jane are jolly dull as well, despite the dreary repetition of 'We like fun', 'The dog likes fun', 'This is fun'. [Shoots self] Don't even get me started on Roger farking Red Hat and Billy Bloody Blue Hat. And I would rather disembowel myself with a rusty spoon than ever pick up anything produced by Ginn again.

Biff and Chip are bloody Stieg Larsson in comparison.

We're -suffering- reading Biff and Chip again with ds.

All I can offer is that afterwards you might even get Daisy $¥+*%%23€ Meadows and the ridiculous fairies. Two of those books and you'll be begging for Floppy back.

I refused to have any Daisy Meadows books in the house very quickly.

Ignoring ORT rather and just sticking with our weekly deliveries from Reading Chest (thank you MN!)

Ds (now age 12) and Dd (now age 9) both LOVED Biff, Chip, Kipper, Anneena and Nadim. And mum and dad and feisty gran...
I loved them too. The stories had humour, both ds loved looking for the hidden glasses in the story and I loved the 80's retro-ness of it all.

I am now a SEN TA in a Junior School. And Biff, Kipper et al are the books of choice by our lower ability children despite having numerous books from various schemes to choose from. 'My' Year 5 children love the Magic Key range and one boy is loving the story we are currently reading where Anneena and Nadim have an adventure and meet two brothers trying to produce the first 'flying machine' and crash into a barn after seeing the Wright brothers fly overhead on their first flight... all the while clever Nadim is telling them they need rudders... And one of 'my' girls loves the story where the children go back in time and meet Queen Victoria. It gives them not only a story but a bit of history and an interest to find out more. The girl in question asked if Queen Victoria did indeed have the number of children she was shown to have in the story. I told her we will find out so together we are scheduled in to have a research session next week and we will make a little Queen Vic factfile during Guided Reading (girl comes out of class for this and we do our own reading based activity)

I personally think they are a fab range of books. I don't like Ginn and I don't like the range of so-called non-fiction books we have. Dull as dishwater and don't actually teach much. Plus there is no story so my SEN pupils struggle to grasp / retain the information within the book. They lose interest rapidly. But books about children (albeit with stupid names) they can relate to and thus 'understand' and make sense of.

Ah yes, Daisy fucking Meadows. I ask you.

My older dc have developed a nice line in parodies of Rainbow Fairies titles to wind up their youngest sister. 'Harriet the Heroin Fairy', anyone? 'Claudia the Crack Cocaine Fairy'? 'Mary the Methamphetamine Fairy'. STDs are another productive vein (as it were): 'Gloria the Gonorrhea Fairy', 'Chloe the Chlamydia Fairy'.

I have had to beg them to stop for fear that my innocent 7yo will come out with this stuff at school.

My four all learned through the Magic Key books. My eldest was given a different book every day at school, we read it and took it back the next day. He was riveted by it. By the time he finished reception he was on at least stage seven, if not eight. His teacher told me she really pushed reading, because till they could read, they couldn't do a lot else. She worked really hard with all 30 in the class to get them all going as quickly as they could.

Then they introduced the literacy hour. One book a week at school, one book a week home. The other three all did this or similar. Bored wasn't the word for them. I used to get them to read other books at home, but they weren't that interested, purely, I'm sure, because of the way they were taught to read.

Only the eldest reads books for pleasure now. I'm positive it's because the others had to comprehend each book to death.

lmao @ your sophisticated dcs, Frogs.

In my house we talk about Susie the Snot Fairy, Polly the Poo Fairy &c.

We have now sunk to lower depths still. I have finally managed to see a worksheet from DS's school and it seems that their activities associated with these godforsaken books consist of drawing their favourite character. Every time. How many characters are in the early Biff & Chip books? How much character development is there? I despair.

People who hate books when they are 6 won't demand libraries when they are 26.

Almostfifty - absolutely! Couldn't agree more. At that age they just need to get them reading as quickly as possible. What the hell is the point in spending days pondering the intricacies of Kipper's Shoelaces, or whatever. Sure fire way to turn them off reading as "boring". Get them reading and then they can read interesting things with some merit that are worth spending time on.

We get 3 ORT books home a week and each is greatly anticipated by DS. He loves them and particularly likes the humour. There is no way he could rely ont he picture to read the sentences. That said he only moved onto ORT after 3 weeks into reception, after Dandelion readers so didn't use them in the early stages .

Wow, we had to buy the 'xproject' ourselves to read at home and push on with the ORT, weve just read one where 'the boys' rush to a BT phone box to make a call, ( about 20 years old). Its hard not to smile, when asked 'why didnt they use their mobile?' ORT does go up and down, but when its 'down and boring', we just ditch it and do our own thing and when I told the teacher that last year, she said 'good, Im not interested in racing through a scheme, children should read a range of stuff' I can see the building blocks of ORT, although it can be tedious ....

Love Biff, Chip, Kipper etc and so do my kids (8&5). Agree with other posters who said Ginn was worse - it is, by far, no engaging characters, no funny pets, no adventure, no context and no specs to spot in each book. Just worthy, tedious prose. I'm glad dd is on to off scheme books now, and ds is just started on ORT (he will love the magic key ).

Frog
My DH is going to wonder what I'm laughing at..
"Bella the Bondage fairy" anyone?