Book band at end of year 1 what is/was your dc on

[ruby22]

I know this has been done before but just wanted to know what book band your child was on at start of Y1 and at end, also does their age make a difference, ie mine was 5.1 at start of year 1 and on pink band. Just trying to gauge the average, if that exists and yes I know it does depend on the individual child but there must be some expected average so if anyone knows please tell me! thanks

DS is in Reception and was 5 in December. He started school knowing only his basic phonic sounds and was given pink band books. He is now on green band books. I'm impressed with his progress so far - much better than I expected.

DD is June born. Started Y1 on green, about to end as a free reader.

platinum

oh she started on loam

That's very helpful wyorks Mum, ds1 has just brought home his first ort book, has been on rigby star since the start of reception.

My two children started reception from band 1(pink?),and gold band, both finished on lime by the end of y1.

Ds1(December born) started year1 on yellow and ended on white. There was a lovely moment towards the end of the autumn term that he just "got it". It was like a switch being turned on.

I want to point out reading is not a subject itself in the long run. Writing is.Read to learn, self teaching is life time priceless skill.

dd nov born - started Y1 ort stage 5, now stage 8. Some in her class on stage 4 so huge range

DS started Yr 1 on gold, moved to White in .December, doubt they will move him up to jewel before the end of the year. So he has plateaued (partly because, as the TA said, he's going a "bit too fast" through the levels ), but he's basically a free reader at home. There is another boy in his class in the same position, and a couple of other boys and girls on gold, but there's a varied picture across the rest of the group with most around green-turquoise, and a couple on yellow / blue

Daily reading (as much as possible, don't worry if you miss the odd day here or there) is probably the single most useful thing to do with them, I think

It's great when they get to the stage when you can almost forget the book bands. Of course they are useful for school, for being thorough, for building confidence etc etc, but freedom comes in stepping away from them perhaps. Certainly for the parent anyway .

Hear, hear Tgger

DS in YR is just getting to this stage now. It is very liberating to not have to just read ORT Magic Key stories. Hooray!!! His reading is a little way off the "free reading" stage, I'd say he was somewhere between Purple and Gold bands, but tbh I would quite happily not read another banded book again . I should think for the next 6-12 months school ones will come our way which is fine but there's so much out there people, go enjoy!

Interesting that Reception children start on so many different levels at other schools (or some other schools). At dd's school, I think only one child escaped starting on pink level - and even she (now totally fluent on just about any level!) had to start on red.

I suppose the class teacher, who is very experienced, wants to make sure they really know their phonics and have had a thorough grounding - and afaik only one child, in a full Reception class, had been taught to read at all prior to starting. Others knew basic phonics, or, like dd2, just single letter sounds - or nothing at all.

I think in DD2's reception class everyone started on pink, and no reading books were handed out at all until half term. The teacher did say that they were taking time to thoroughly assess everyone's phonic knowledge. DD2 had done quite a lot of stuff at her nursery but benefited from having structure imposed on it all.

The other thing is that children don't progress in a nice steady manner, they do fits and starts and stops and leaps - DD2 was on red by Christmas, then did a weird leap thing and they put her up to blue by late January, then she did it again and they put her up to turquoise, which was where she ended YrR.

I have no idea where DD1 started as I deferred her entry until January and they assessed her individually - she did the leaps thing too though.

DS1 was on yellow at the start of Y1 and now on orange.

DSD's on the Scottish school system, but started P2 (age 5.5) on the Lilac band/Stage 1 ORT books, having never moved on from them during P1. She then spent several months this year working through Red band Stage 1+/2 and Yellow band Stage 3. However, at age 6.25, she's now bringing home ORT Stage 5 books. DSD is also interested in the Rainbow Fairy chapter books and desperate to read these herself. I don't really know if she's actually doing that just yet, but I'm not about to stand there and tell her she isn't capable.

DSD is still a bit convinced she isn't able to read anything aloud besides ORT (which is not true, she has before), and freaks out if the writing is small or if there are too many words on a page, but I want to hand her teacher a medal anyway.

A lot of her sound work this year was reinforced by consistent weekly writing assignments, which she seemed to respond to. We also started watching some TV programmes on PBS UK to help reinforce reading and sounds, which she's enjoyed. She reads aloud just about every day to her parents in both houses, either after school or at bedtime.

DD (7 in September) started on Red and now brings home 3 Orange books a week (they read one band higher in school in a weekly teacher led session). We have had the same experience as a PP with non ORT books with the same colour sticker being much much harder.

I know that my DS1 was a fair way behind average in Y1 so we went out of our way to try to get him books that were reasonably easy for him to read but were more interesting than the usual school fare (think dinosaurs, spies, adventure books) and within a year he was assessed as having the reading ability of a 10.5 year old. Where there's a will, there's a way...

They are obviously all way behind at dd's school as no child in her reception class is beyond a yellow level yet.

When people here say their children are 'free reading' at this age what does that mean? Have they literally moved through all the book levels and are reading fiction with lots of words and no/very few pictures on the page like Harry Potter etc? Do they understand everything they read as well as reading the words accurately?

I was thinking dd was doing well with reading but this thread is concerning me

Dd is on gold library. Her school seems slightly different in that they go up to purple on ort type books, then go onto purple library (which are normal books and harder than the other purple ones), then gold library. Most of the books she brings home now are rainbow fairy type stories. She has really slowed down though as couldnt read at all when she started school but ended reception on purple. She'$ only gone up two levels this year.

surviving it just means that no-one in your DD's reception class has made that leap in reading yet - it happens. My DDs were very ahead with reading at the end of YrR but by the time they hit Yr4 a lot of their peers had caught up so that their little band of readers was a bit larger than just one or two. And thank goodness for that.

I think 'free reading' is a very misleading term - DD2's school put her on 'free reading' at the end of YrR but in practice that meant she was free to choose any book from the classroom cupboards. She was off ORT but they had plenty of other scheme books (most of which were far more interesting and fun). And yes, she did start reading chapter books (the dreaded Rainbow Fairies and the Terrible Tiara Club) by the end of YrR but she really wasn't reading Dickens and Flaubert (thank goodness, I couldn't stand doing Madame Bovary again! ).

It's just that a good school will support reading development in lots of different ways - guided reading, reading for pleasure and discussing the book with the child, reading to the children in class - they all achieve different parts of the whole that is reading.