Knowing the reading level is right for your child. Advise please?

[madmum04]

How do you know that a reading level is the right one for your child? I mean my daughter yr 1 age 6 was finding ORT books quite hard she was on stage 1+ pink band, so back in february her TA put her on the jelly and bean reading scheme book 4 as he felt it was a better scheme for her, her confidence was great initially on these books, she plodded along until book 20 (brown band) when she started finding them hard, think its around a red or yellow equivalent in ORT but correct me if im wrong. I put a note in her reading record that she was starting to find them harder and her TA said he had seen the note and wanted to talk with me sometime about her reading and ways to help her, i havent seen him yet as he said he had given her a different book same scheme, higher level so green band Jelly and Bean book 1. These books have 10 pages in and more words but he said she would find it easier as she would be able to sound them out, the last two nights shes been so hard to get reading and out of the books shes got roughly 26% of the words wrong so im wondering is this about right for her or would you say off that its too hard for her? I dont want to knock her confidence as shes already a kid whos hard to motivate but at the same time i dont want to be mithering if this is how it should be. Any advise please

I always understood that children should be able to read 90% of a book. Although when I have listened to children read at my daughter's school, some get alot more than 10% of the words wrong, more like 30% and even though I comment about this the teacher doesn't change to easier books. My daughter has always lost interest in reading if the book is too hard. The problem is so many of the old ORT books are sight based reading, so don't always help early readers who are learning phonics in the classroom. I would buy some phonic based books and start at the level where your dd is reading 90-95% of the book correctly. Good Luck speaking with the School.

Ask for a sound book with graphemes in to help with her sight recognition of these and help her to build words. Also a word pot to build up her sight knowledge of 'tricky words' which are impossible to 'sound out' e.g said. It sounds like your daughter has been put on books too soon in reception and the books are overtaking her word and phonic knowledge iykwim.

Next time you get a book spend some time talking through it and getting her to tell you the story using the pictures, then read it to her, then ask her to read it to you. This will give her more confidence and a more secure base to become a better reader in the future.

Also ask your daughter's teacher what phase she is on at phonics. There are some good phonics websites with lovely games to play which will also provide her with a stronger foundation to read from - us she will enjoy them. Www.phonicsplay.co.uk is a good one and quite cheap for a year's subscription. Games are divided into phases.

Good luck and don't worry - as I said it is more likely she has been pushed on too far and too quick - so slowing down will be a positive, not a backward step.

I thought it was also about 1 in 10 words should be tricky to know if the book was right.

someone on here recommended Reading Chest for a range of different books (our School uses ORT which ds hated) its brought on ds's reading no end

Can you describe in what way she is getting the words wrong? Jelly and Bean are decodable books so she shouldn't be getting anything wrong if she knows the alphabetic code that is in them.

I've also heard the "should be able to read 9 words in 10" thing.
I would say though that my DC always seem to "dip" when they move up a level - I think they struggle with the increased length/more complicated sentence structure/different formal of stories - and they are seemingly unable to read things they could read fluently the week before. So I would perhaps persevere for a little longer. Also books at the same level do differ so maybe another book might be easier for your DD?

It's a very rough and ready rule of thumb, but I have found with my girls that anything more than 15 mins per book/ chapter means the book is too hard and they get fed up, 10 mins is about right, reading it much quicker means they get bored and they need to go up a level. With phonics books they sometimes need a bit of prompting when they first go up a level, with ORT books they need help with the tricky or red words.

The time thing does collapse around ORT 9/10 where the books suddenly get really long (and have to be read in two sittings), before they move onto chapter books, and each chapter can be read in 10 mins. It's just my own rule of thumb but it seems to work for my girls.

Thanks all fab advice as I knew it would be :)

Popysiepie at a recent parents meeting her teacher said she was in her phase 3 group im presuming thats phonics or reading but have no idea what that is or means for yr 1.

RiversideMum she still finds it hard with words like hay, away, says, next, have and so on there are also some words in what she doesnt know like twenty-one, hurray.

I will keep trying with her, she tries so hard and we read everyday I will also go and see her TA like he offered and see what advice he can give about helping her with reading

Thanks again :)

3duracellbunnies thanks :)

We do only do the 10 minutes thing at the most as she has a very low attention/concentration span. We're not at ORT 9/10 yet were a long way off, her ORT is only stage 2

Yes dd2 is on stage 3, (I hated stage 9/10 with dd1) but I find that if say there are 12 pages and it takes 10min to read 6, then it is too hard. If it takes 10 min to read 12, then it's about right, if they read 12 pages in 6 minutes then it's not challenging enough. It's the same at level 3, so think about how many pages she is reading in 10 mins.

It seems to work well at the lower levels, and for chapters when she gets to those, but there is a phase where the books go on forever, without chapter breaks. For those I get them to read for 10mins as long as I have a glass of wine to get me through. Once they get onto chapter books though sanity returns.