Refusing to put dc on next reading level or even assess

[Blueschool]

Dc in in year 2. Has been on same reading level since September.

My dc may not be good at a lot at school, but reading is dc strong point. Not the top of class but quite advanced. Not just my opinion but her previous teachers and helpers.

Her current level is not a challenge anymore. Mentioned this weeks ago. Given a huge list basically telling me why dc is a crap reader in teachers opinion. Very surprised as one area always was praised on reading.

Took it on chin and we worked hard to resolve the issues like "not enough expression".

Dc reading is just fine. I can not find not fault.

My comment I wrote last week was the "book was not a challenge". Teacher took a whole page up in dd reading record to again tell me how crap dc is.

I felt the comments were utterly unfair and do not reflect reality at all. She also told me I could buy books to read at home! Very unfair assumption dc reads for pleasure all the time and has 100+ at home.

She said IF she wants she will assess her after Christmas she will.

My issues are

• I thought parents and teachers were meant to be in partnership with education. How is this a partnership?

• IF dc is genuinely reading badly at school WHY? Why is there such a difference? Why is her educational environment not making her feel confident and supported to show her real abilty?

• Another parent has told me they have had similar issues as the teacher gets herself stressed. Im sorry, but holding a child back because you are stressed is quite something.

What should I do?

Mam - I honestly think it's a teacher rut. They just get stuck in the rut of thinking "x isn't a good reader". Well x may have been having a bad day, or may not yet have had his or her reading moment, or may have had a run or excessively tedious books, etc etc. Then when the parent says something, parent is put down as precious. Parent says something else and the "talk to the hand" defences go up. Nobody likes being told they're doing their job wrong, which is in essence what one is telling the teacher, so the teacher becomes defensive.

"I think the teacher is probably making a mistake here. If the daughter and the mother want so desperately to move onto Gold books why not let them? If the child needs to work on her comprehension, reading with expression, summarising plot details, imagining alternative stories and so on, then she can just as well do this with a Gold book. "

How many times can I type YES. Absolutely. Do something to kickstart things - why not - the world won't end.

Poor old blueschool's daughter might not be performing in class because she's bored, fed up, dispirited, demotivated etc etc. There's a pretty instant solution to those problems. It just doesn't fit in iwth the process.

The teacher isn't necessarily saying the child isn't a good reader. (I know the OP's characterising it that way.) But the teacher seems to be talking about all kinds of interpreting skills that parents probably don't naturally associate with the mechanical act of reading. It seems as though the teacher wants to concentrate on those before moving the child up a level. And it looks, from the OP's posts, as though she strongly disagrees. This situation is bound to produce an impasse because the OP isn't likely to focus on the teacher's requirements if she disagrees with them and neither is the teacher likely to change the reading level....

So the OP's options are to stay where she is, indefinitely maybe, or to move the reading level herself.

Completely agree with learnandsay. What possible harm can it do? Teachers sometimes do get 'stuck' and I think sometimes they resent parents getting involved and it makes them stick their heels in.

You will almost certainly find that if you back off and write 'lovely reading' every night then the teacher will move her after xmas.

Learnandsay I do agree with you.

However I will point out we have been working on the requirements as pointed out about 5-6 weeks ago by the teacher. There is genuinely no more issues as dd has worked hard.

That is what is so frustrating.

I asked dd this morning when she last read with her teacher. It transpired they only do guided reading in groups only once a week, sometimes less. Never individual reading.
How can you assess a child fairly this way? Not once since starting year2has she done 1-1 according to dc. Is this the norm?

My d3 is in a state primarly and they read individually every day to the TA.

Eclectible I do feel there might be some element resentment about my comment.Especially as another parent had a similar reaction over the same thing.

There is tons of resentment in the teachers at d3's state primary. They are very chippy about annoying middle class mothers (they dont mind the dads so much ) There probabalby is at my older dds private school too but they are just better at hiding it!

It does happen Blueschool, I experienced it with my son's Year 1 teacher as I metioned up thread.

Thing is though, if (as in my sons case) the reading book is so out of synch then you can presumably get through it in a few minutes and move on to more fun reading.

I know children like to progress, but i always instill in my two that it's not about climbgin through the levels but about enjoying reading and tryin all sorts of texts (was a hard sell when he cam home with the book "Rice" I can tell you) but I think that's the best approach in these circumstances.

I know everyone is saying just focus on home reading... But are you sure this is best? Should I really not say anything about how unjust we find this is to the school? Im all for an easy life but....

Blueschool: Well the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Also you might at some point be teaching your child that she's "better" than the teacher and the school, because the teacher's got it wrong. But that's the teacher's fault. Your child is being held back and being demotivated by her. You've got to stand up for her either by doing it at home or by saying something. I would do the thing that's least stressy. Also the thing that's least likely to be passed on negatively up the school with other teachers.

Only another six months to go. Make your own star chart or something at home. Put the harder books in your child's book bag to take to school so that she can show the teacher or whoever she wants what she's reading at home.

A lot of parents are brighter than a lot of teachers, it doesn't mean they know how to teach of course but it means that defensiveness arises. Mostly you just trust the teacher that they're good at what they do, and you're good at what you do. But in this case you can't trust the teacher so you have to make your own way.

Honest answer blue I dont know

year 1 read reglar just wrote nice reading in book she finished near bottom of class.

year 2 went in showed teacher books we were reading at home, i do feel resented and not listened to.

neither approach worked.

You have good suggestions at home reading and guess new teacher next year.

I would only be worried if low reading scheme equated to low national curriculum level at end of year as year 2sats she will be graded and assessed on reading capability.

I still feel quite sad that the whole reading issue meant we left behind most of people we know but dds vastly improved confidence and happyness makes me think yes we doing right thing.

I just lacked confidence in old school and this then spead to otyer topics and facts she was never acknowledged as good at anything:(
teacher told dd she was dissapoitment as got some time word wrong.

she was listed to daily as down as daily reader as struggling.
felt she as piegon holed as week reader yet she made loads progress over summer.

Also it doesn't really matter about the unjustness. I mean it does, but what really matters is how well your child is doing. Focus on that and try to forget the "injustice".

Good advice from brycie.

Its easy to take it personal.

do as much as you can at home, diffrent levels, authors, fiction, non fiction even audio books can help with expression as thats my next step with dd santa bring some story cds and books.

Two things to seriously consider:

1. what will going higher (head presumably as you have had no joy with class teacher) acually achieve?

2. how is it actually negatively effecting your daughter?

With respect to point 1, I would have thought most head teachers would have no or little personal knowledge of your daughters reading ability and only has the class teacher's assessment to go on and is unlikely to question that without some very strong evidence of class teachers incompetence in this area. In short, I would expect head to back class teacher up.

On point 2, is your daughter actually losing confidence with her reading? Are you possibly, unintentionaly, giving her signals that you find the books dull or too easy for her that she is picking up? I think there are ways you can boost confidence without undermining the teacher. Perhaps she does read differently in class than at home that are being picked up on.

I do have much sympathy with your position, as I have said, I just know, from experience, how easy it is to get caught up in the whole book level thing and in a couple of years when book bands are not featured you might look back and wish you had relaxed a bit about it and just tried to enjoy doing school book with your daughter without all this stress and anxiety.

You can find fun in even the easy dull books, I even managed to make the Rice book exciting to my son with plenty of enthusiasm and encouraging remarks.

Others may disagree.

Same problems here. DS year 2 has been stuck on ort level 6 books since may. He was initially sent home with level 5 books in september and I asked for him to be moved back to level 6 which is where he had left off. The teacher was happy with this. However, he reads far harder books at home. I have some ort level 9 books that he can easily read and he reads his mr men books quite easily. He is currently reading The magic finger - roald dahl. Now I would say this is too hard for him at the moment as he has lost the expressive reading that he has with other books. But he wants to read it so why not.

Problem is his teacher does not have the same view of his reading that I do. I asked for him to be moved upa level last week and whilst the teacher did sent home a level 7 ort book it was with a written note that she did not feel he was ready as he was not a confident reader in class and to see how we go. After speaking with ds it would appear that neither the teacher nor teaching assistant have listened to ds one to one this year. All reading he has done is in guided reading sessions. This is where the problem is. He hates being the centre of attention and is quiet and shy. He doesnt have much confidence in his ability in comparison to his peers and therefore it is not a surprise that the reading that the teacher has observed is below the standard that he would demonstrate if he were to read one to one with her. The only one to one reading in school is with a parent helper and her comments are always along the lines of very confident, good expression etc. Seems to be that guided reading only works well for the confident child and is not for everyone so why cant the teachers realise this and at least put in place measures to hear the less confident children on their own.

Guided reading is a bit crap really. There are a million utterly specious reasons why it isn't but it is.

Am shocked how many children apparently don't read individually with teachers.

In fact I think they just made up the reasons because they were cutting down on resources and had too many children to read one to one. So they invented guided reading and then had to find marvellous reasons why it was so marvellous.

Having heard my DGD struggle though ORT stage 4 (she is 5) I long for the day when she is reading a book with little challenge.
If the school books don't do what you think they should get library books and have fun reading them together. Reading books are only a tool that you use on the way to the real business of reading.

"think they make reading far moer complex than it needs to be." said Mam29.

I COMPLETELY AGREE with you. I agree that comprehension used to be (and in my dds private school still is) done seperately with focussed work on this area with special worksheets or passages of books that they HAVEN't read before. Why they have all these levels and concepts that the children are supposed to grasp from one 16 page crappy book I do not know. 'Inferring from the text' honestly it is enough to put kids off reading for life.

"think they make reading far moer complex than it needs to be." said Mam29.

This is a funny one. When I was little we didn't have phonemes, digraphs, split digraphs, decoding, blending segmenting and all the rest of it. We just picked up a book and we read it. And this is precisely how I started teaching my daughter. When she was very young she would learn whole words. And if she didn't know a word she said so. And she could read Dr Seuss and Marinarik's Little Bear with that simple system because the vocabulary there is very simple and very very repetitive. So far so good. But as the words began to get longer and not so repetitive she migrated onto a system of working the words out bit by bit. Working out English bit by bit is complicated. The equivalent complicated matter under the system that I learned under is spelling.

Sometime I wish schools didn't send reading books home, or there were no reading levels - just think of the stress we could all save ourselves if reading in school and reading at home were two completely separate things (like they are with most other primary school subjects)!

But a good guiding reading teacher should be making sure every child takes part, and will be able to tell what they're getting out of the book.

I was only a parent helper, but when I had my group it became obvious very quickly who would volunteer answers, who would not want to put themselves forward. Got round that by different methods. You get them to all write ideas on whiteboards and read it out, or take turns who you asked first.

I had one child who was exceedingly quiet and shy, but from I knew she was probably second best in the group for digging out things from the text. The louder ones often put in less thought because they were too busy speaking to see the subtlties. It actually worked well for the quieter ones as they saw the louder ones taking on their ideas.

I would expect any teacher to be able to bring each child out in guided reading.

I think some teachers can dig their heels in and be desperate to show you who's in charge. When DD went up to turquoise level one of the LSAs, who I know socially, told me "oh, little Avon was borderline skipping turquoise and going up to the next level. Give it a couple of weeks and she'll move up again. " I made the fatal mistake of telling DD (why, oh why ) that, thinking she'd be dead chuffed. WHich she was, so much so that she relayed the info back to said LSA. DD has now been on Turquoise level for 2 months and counting! The books are too easy, so we just concentrate on harder stuff at home. I've had my wrists slapped, I think!