Forced baby behaviour?

[learnandsay]

Are simplistic phonics books good, bad or neutral? If a Reception child can already read Ladybird stories such as Three Little Pigs, Where the Wild Things Are, Dr Seuss, etc, etc, etc but they're bringing home apparently the whole ORT 1+ range comprising of nothing but CVC words which present no challenge and no learning opportunity either, is reading them:

(1) a waste of time, reading time is precious, doesn't it make more sense to spend it on reading words which present a learning opportunity?

(2) potentially leading towards reading becoming uninteresting

(3) promoting ignorance - if the child can read the names of countries already the child could be reading sentences like: The Nile is the longest river in the world, instead of sentences like Dot got a pot and Bot got Dot's pot. Pat pat pat, tap tap tap.

In summary, would the time be better spent reading something useful?

I suppose so, Amumin, but then quite a few parents have children who can't read.

all you need to write in the reading record is ' x read all of 'pete's pan' tonight. She found it it easy to read. signature.

that's it

what do you think you need to write?

At 4? Or at 7?
Most children will learn to read by 7 or 8. Some need more help than others. And all will do better with supoprtive and interested parents.

But the level of involvement you are getting into is not going to be the difference between your child learning to read and her failing. By 7 it will be hard to tell the difference between her literacy and that of most other children in her class.

You are just not feeling able to give up control of what she does and how she does it. I hope for both your sakes that you learn to lighten up a little about her education - hothousing children is not the best way to turn out happy and fulfilled people.

OP, I think you need to stop over-thinking this really I do. The most important thing is that your child develops a love of reading. You don't need to writer an essay in the reading diary. You spend time reading with your child - some parents won't and the diary simply gives the teacher an idea of what support the child is getting. Is it possible the teacher asked you only to focus on school books in the diary because your comments were so epically long before?

Right, I'm a pushy parent and not ashamed of it, but I am not fully in your camp here - mainly because you say very little about what your daughter actually enjoys. You did say early on that she 'loves' the simple books. You worry in your OP that the simple books might be 'leading towards reading becoming uninteresting' - well, couldn't that also happen with the 'useful' books you are pushing her towards? Why not let her enjoy reading? That is the key factor that will make her the best possible reader she can be. Repetition and rhyming are also very enjoyable to young children; perhaps that is what she likes about the simple books?

How often does your DD choose her own books to read? Because it comes across from your posts that she is stuck with either the school's choices, which admittedly don't sound very challenging, and yours which are 'useful' but may not always be what she wants either. If you asked her tonight 'What do you want to read?' and she said the simple book, would you try to persuade her on to something else? You can read some more stretching stuff with her, sure, but I would try to move away from the implication that reading lower-level books is bad, if that's something she likes to do.

You do also seem very fixated on the idea that getting the school to recognise that you are right is the main issue here. I don't think it is. I think that making sure your daughter enjoys reading is the most important thing. I am also a firm believer that no time spent reading is wasted time. There are always learning opportunities to be had. They just may not always be the ones you are looking for at that moment.

Think about your own reading habits, in fact -do you sit down every night and read Shakespeare, or Joyce's Ulysses, or Proust? Or do you vary between books like that and lighter material that is simply factual or entertaining or distracting? Not all reading has to be stretching or intellectually challenging for the reading to be a worthwhile activity - and variation between the two is more likely to make her a keen reader.

Really, op! Now you're tying yourself up in knots about not recognising what reading band is applicable for your child.
Clue: if she can read it with expression, and answer the comprehension questions, she's learnt all she can from it and you move up to the next level.
Don't worry about what colour or letter is on the outside of the book; it's irrelevant to your child and if, as I suspect, it's for boasting purposes; the other parents don't give a rats arse what level your child is on, they are far too interested in their own.

I've never really understood the "it all evens out in the end," argument. I'm not in favour of 7yr olds reading War & Peace, but if for the sake of argument one is reading that and the other is reading The Beano then it hasn't evened out, has it? If it ever did even out then all adults would have the same reading level.

My daughter doesn't really read useful books yet her favourite book is some kind of mix the pages flip book and Dr Seuss.

PS: Flogging, I was trying to work out what corresponds to the 1a 1b 1c etc assessments ( I think I wrote that above. For ORT it's straightforward. )

It doesn't even out, you're right, but on the other hand it's not clear that starting the race early necessarily means you'll end out ahead. My DD wasn't reading at all until 6 weeks ago, just didn't get blending at all. Within 6 weeks she's got all the fundamentals and is surging ahead, and more importantly, is absolutely loving it. I could probably have pushed reading earlier, but she wasn't ready. I'm massively ambitious for my kids - most of us are - and I've been very educationally successful myself. But the best educational success comes from loving what you do. Obsessing about external validation in the shape of reading levels and forging ahead in them at all costs is not going to achieve that.

The all evens out in the end is the really nice way of saying that the children who read early are often not those with best literacy level come year 3 or 4.

Out and out boast my DD has the most advanced reading age in her year (4) at a very academic school. However, I make very derogatory comments about the fact that DD did not start to read until the November of reception (no books at all came home before then). There were several children in this group who read at 2.5years. Probably in a few years time it will all change again.

On the other hand, this discussion has been quite useful, in that I was so unaware of the book banding that I'd been blithely picking books from both red and pink boxes in DD's classroom, and wondering why some of the books seemed a little too tricky .

I'm not trying to win anything, I'm just teaching my daughter to read! (I'm also saying I don't agree with evens out argument. I don't want to win anything but I just wanted to say how much I disagree with that.)

I'd love to read some research on progressive rates of reading. Where are people getting their data from?

Actually if your kid is capable of reading war and peace at 12 it doesn't matter whether they were on pink band or purple band in reception. The 'al even out' comments really mean that your dd will get to her natural ability whatever that is by the time she's 7, as will everyone else. Oh and a few will probably be on a higher level than her!

I've found a Children's Services guide to NC book band colours, but different reading schemes use their own colours. Most major publishers use the same book banding system. Some use their own colours alongside the book bands which are usually found on the back of the books. You can buy The Book Band listing handbook approx £25 which lists story books as well as reading scheme titles by book band.

Have you worked it out yet - that being able to read early confers no advantage whatsoever?!

the book banding is
lilac (non words)
pink
red
yellow
blue
green
orange
turquoise
purple
gold
white
lime
brown
grey
crimson
navy

as I said most reading schemes produced by the major publishing companies will follow the same banding system - so it's very easy to match more than one scheme. There is only a problem with very old books like ORT which were written before book banding was introduced.

Titchy, the only advantage that I want for my daughter is that she can read.

That having been said I'd still like to see people's relative reading progress data rather than hear their unsupported theories. (I'd like to see the facts.)

Yes, "it all evens out" doesn't mean everyone will end up with the same reading skills. It means that pushing as hard and fast as you can while she is 4 will not give her better reading skills at 7 than she would have had from the entirely adequate teaching she will be getting in school, allied with an interested and supportive attitude from you.

Some children at 7 will be struggling to read because of innate difficulties they are having in picking it up (but most will get there eventually), and some because despite the teaching they get in school they don't get support and interest at home, and/or their homelife is chaotic and they struggle to achieve their potential.

But a 7yo who has been hothoused will not be doing better than a 7yo who has had good teaching and parental support.

What's a useful book? Surely the important element should be an enjoyable book (regardless of age)

Unsupported theories = experience of one or more children reaching reading fluency, plus longitudinal study of children in the same class and children of friends and colleagues.

Learnandsay,

I've said this on your threads before - DS could read fluently on arrival at school. DD could not read any more than her name.

I would say that by the end of Year 1 their 'reading abilities' were about the same, and since the end of Year 1, their reading levels at the same age have been the same. Looking at the detail of their reading skills (decoding is a 'once and once only' skill to acquire, after all - there are all sorts of other reading skills that make children and adults better and better readers) they vary slightly. DS, as a child with ASD traits, found inference in books tricky, but had vastly superior decoding skills. DD found all the response to character etc stuff easy, but found longer / tricker words (dinosaur names, say, or Russian footballing stars) harder to decode.

Reading early did not confer a lasting advantage on DS. DD's progress in school was better in the first couple of years (because she went from zero to fluent, rather than from fluent to having other skills) but both have made the same progress since.

If there isn't any data then I suppose we might as well forget about the all evens out arguments because it all depends doesn't it. A child who reads a lot will have read more than one who doesn't and that has nothing to do with when they learned to read but whether or not they like reading.

I don't know why we're arguing about this because it's not something I'm particularly interested in. I'm interested in being able to read versus not being.

There was I a study about 4 years ago I can't remember details that tracked several thousand children to the age of about 13 and found no advantage in early reading. You may find it's details on The Times website as it reported it in a lot of detail. I did read the full study it seemed to be a good well balanced study with multicentres.

Just looked at school data, tracking children from Reception.

OIf the 3 children who were the most able in reading in Reception, only 1 is in the top quarter of the class at the end of Year 3. That child is extremely able in all areas, but has the most laid-back parents in the history of mankind, and still rises naturally to the top of every class.

Of the 3 with the lowest scores for Reading in reception, 1 (who has significant SEN) is still there, 1 is in the middle of the class, and one is in the top quarter.

Definitely lots of movement - I couldn't be bothered to do a class list ordered at the beginning and end, but I would say that very few have remained in the same 'relative positions' as they were on entry to school.