Moved up 3 levels in reading?

[AbbyR1973]

Just wondered what you think about this- DS1 in reception is a fairly good reader. His last 5-6 book have all been ORT stage 6 (book band orange) and he has managed these fine. His last book was The Treasure Chest which is also an ORT stage 6 book but turquoise band which is one level up.
So yesterday he came home with The Quest, which is an ORT stage 9 book, book band gold. He read last night and although it was more of a challenge, he did not really need any help with it and did not seem fazed by the obvious level jump.
He could probably do with working on expression but has good fluency. His comprehension is ahead of his reading skills as he has no problem understanding the difficult language of books like Five Children and It and The Wind in the Willows.
I was surprised that he had gone up 3 levels/ book bands though and wondered if it was deliberate, or perhaps giving him something more challenging to keep him going over Xmas or if it was more likely a happy accident!
Thanks.

My reception son has also just gone up three/four book bands. I think it was a combination of his top phonics set moving on to phase 5 of the phonics scheme (so he knows more graphemes/sounds now), and a bit of a brain growth spurt from him.

Most of the books are really long (32 pages with 4 sentences on a page) and we have to read them over two days instead of one now otherwise it's too much.

Someone in his class is a free reader!

DS1 is on the Gold book band, in Y1. Sometimes he accidentally brings home an Orange book, because the Orange and Gold stickers can look the same. Are you sure this is not what has happened? If he's fine with it, that's great, but our teacher always tells us via his reading record if DS is moving up a level, so I would be surprised if they would just skip several levels like that and not mention it. DS1 was tested as having the reading age of an 8 year old when he was still 5, which they flagged up to us - so have your DS's teachers mentioned his great reading?

DD went from orange to lime so it seems pretty normal and she is happier with lime because its more of a story. Well done to your DS

That is brilliant! My dd is 8, is average in her class at reading, and is on level 9 on ORT! But I think they do things differently where I am, as they only start getting books home in P1, when they are 5, and they have no words in x

My dd is 8 and on lever 9 too so quite relieved now.

My DD also reception has gone up 2 levels in a week and will be going up another level straight after Xmas...

It's hard to work out which level she is on as she gets jolly phonics books and is on the green level ones (the last level) but they are much harder than green ORT so I guess maybe a couple of levels above....

Will be interested to see what the school give her when she finishes them.

Thanks for your comments. It's interesting to hear that others are skipping several levels at a time so it must be fairly common practise. I guess to an extent there is still an element of finding their level at this stage in reception.
Cake crumbs- in the past when he has gone up levels he has just gone up, no specific comment in his book. He has not had a reading age assessment to my knowledge but he has been identified as being a strong reader. He does lots of one to one phonics work with a TA when the rest of the class are doing group phonics. The comment at parent's evening was that DS was working beyond the top of the top groups across reading writing and maths.
The school have been excellent with him so far and have really found him the right balance between enjoying the play element of activities in reception and providing challenge for him.
I am quite prepared for it to be an error that's fine, but he does seem to be enjoying this book more. I will ask his teacher.

DD is 5yo and in Yr 1. She has never 'skipped' a level as such, but may have only been on the level for a week before being moved up again. Any time she has been moved up, it has always been written in her reading diary by the class teacher with an explanation of what she needs to work on to improve her reading further.

DD is on gold level and has been for a while, but the teacher often gets her to choose larger chapter books from the school library too. The problem I have at the moment is DD can read very fluently - with expression and intonation, she can predict what will happen and also has an understanding and can justify why the author has used particular words (all things the class teacher told her to work on to improve her reading), but DD is at a level now where she prefers to read quietly and it is more of a challenge to get her to read aloud. We are at the stage where she reads most of the book/chapter quietly and then reads a couple of pages to me.

Simpson, according to Jolly Phonics JP Green books are the equivalent to Blue/Green book band. JP Blue books are the in their collection and equivalent to orange/turquoise book band.

are the last in their collection, that should say!

Bunnyjo - thanks for that I have been looking for info on JF books for ages on how they compare...

DD is on the last stage of JF books (so I must have got it wrong she must be on blue then ).

Disclaimer: she has left her book bag at school for the last few days and I have not looked!!

Our school doesn't seem to skip levels (or not at the moment.) But my daughter has been given only the ORT fireflies books for quite a while now. They're non fiction which is an improvement on the God awful Biff & Chip (which my daughter loves.) And they're very old and dog-eared. They're non decodable which is good too. I suspect the new fireflies are decodable. I've never seen a new one. But I've googled the blurb and the OUP website say something about the latest ones being re-written to fit the new framework. That could mean anything, I suppose. (I hope they haven't dumbed them down to make them decodable. The old ones are just fine.) Well, would be fine if they weren't so tatty!

DD's JP books don't have a blurb at the back (another reason to dislike them).

She currently has The Enormous Turnip ATM although we have not read it ( as we keep leaving it at school!!)

The books are shiny and new as I suspect it's one of the first years they have used them (they certainly did not have them when DS was in reception).

The Enormous Turnip is also in the Heinemann Storyworlds scheme. For a while I tried comparing different publisher's versions of the same stories. But it's too much of a heck-meck. My daughter is just reading books now and to hell with it! We haven't been on this home made no scheme at all scheme for too long, (a couple of weeks.) But it seems to be going alright.

I suppose it depends on how many books from each scheme a school has. I noticed on the OUP website that some of its books on any given level can be purchased in packs of 36!! Do children really need to read 36 similar books, or even anything like that number? I'm beginning to think that there may be a danger that the scheme itself can become the important thing and learning to read (which is what this is all about) can get a bit forgotten about.

Perhaps the publishers want this to happen because they're making lots of money.

This happened with my dd who's in yr one. First time I thought that maybe the band had been mistaken as n orange band but no, she was meant to be on gold.

Maybe he hadnt been heard to read for a while and on hearing him read the teacher assessed and assigned accordingly.

I do think the higher the book level the longer the child is on it iyswim...

DD has raced through the first few levels but I do expect her to slow down a bit at some point as the books get tougher...

I suppose that 36 books is for the whole class so if you had 30 kids in the whole class and maybe 6-7 on the same level there is enough for them all...

some kids won't be taken to the library or have their own books at home so the only book that they might read would be their school one so I guess it will take them longer to go through the levels...

I guess it will also depend on what the teacher wants. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of children out there who are on lower reading levels than they need to be because they can decode the books they're being given and can decode the ones a number of levels higher up too.

It seems as though the first early barrier which some teachers introduce is reading with expression (or reading with enough expression.) Is this necessary? How much expression is enough? And is this ever used as an excuse not to give a child a different kind of book because there aren't enough books?

I don't know to what extent in Reception children are quizzed about their comprehension of the story. (I think one mum wrote that her Reception daughter was quizzed and hated it.) My own view is that decoding should be enough for now. There are later years to work on comprehension. If some (or most teachers are letting children progress up the levels because their decoding skills are great then fine.) Maybe some teachers aren't allowing this (and should be.) Comprehension is one of those how long is a piece of string activities, because who is to say what has and what has not been comprehended? And who is to say that it needed to be comprehended? Has comprehension ever been used as an excuse to deny different books because in reality there aren't enough other books?

DD does guided reading and when she reads on a 121 basis with her teacher she is asked questions about her comprehension etc etc...

I personally think comprehension and decoding go hand in hand (for book levels) there is no point putting a child on a level if they can decode it perfectly but don't have a clue what they have read iyswim.

Don't know about reading with expression as I am still working on it with DS (yr3!!)

I'm not yet sure about comprehension. I think books need to be of some degree of complexity before asking questions about them makes any sense. Most of the school books that I've seen so far are too short. For example, I think a great comprehension questions are:

Do you think Peter Rabbit should have gone into Mr McGregor's garden?
And if not why not?
What do you think could have happened, would have happened to him if he had been caught?

Because the child needs to be aware of the danger and the child needs to know what happened to Peter Rabbit's father. So in fact in order to understand the story there is already a level of abstraction included by Beatrix Potter. To my mind it's only at that stage when comprehension starts to make sense and isn't simply someone asking annoying and unnecessary questions.

I think schools are big on "What is X doing?" "How might Y feel?" etc etc even in the basic books.

I remember DD having a reading session in nursery (think the book was Sam's Pot) and having to answer questions about why Sam might be cross etc etc...

It is much easier to ask decent questions when the books have more in them I agree, but I guess that is because more is expected from the child when at a higher level (reading book wise).

DD's school teachers have always placed great emphasis on comprehension, even from Red/Yellow book band. Questions could be why was Biff (ugh, thank God they're long gone!) sad? Why did Wilf get wet? Yes, it is easier to ask more about comprehension as they move through the book bands/levels, but there are plenty of questions you can ask, even in the earlier levels.

Certainly in DD's school, children would not be moved up book bands because they could decode the text perfectly well - they would be expected to show comprehension alongside it. There are many other factors to consider, especially when moving up the book bands - recall, expression, intonation and inference, amongst others.

I don't think this is at all unusual in Yr R, certainly both my DDs skipped book bands. Learning to read is not something that happens along predictable and linear lines - especially early on, some things just suddenly 'click' - a combination of the understanding of phonics taking off, the emotional maturity to understand a more complex storyline developing, attention span increasing. When all those factors happen together, a child can suddenly leap forwards. Both my DDs jumpt from ORT 2 to ORT 5, then at the end of YrR to ORT 9.

Things got a little more predictable after that, but they still went through the levels pretty quickly. Boys tend to mature a bit later than girls, so there was a whole cohort of boys who suddenly 'got it' at the end of Yr1 and put the class on a more even keel again.

Congratulations on your DS and his fabulous reading skills - he's definitely earned the 'promotion'.

My dd has skipped through the book quite significantly in reception, she slowed down in y1 but has now just completely skipped from white to coming off the scheme altogether in y2. Seems in our school if the children can read and comprehension etc is also good they are keen to encourage the enjoyment of reading so when dd has expressed she is bored or can read they are quick to respond. Dd has done very well coming off the scheme in two weeks she has read two chapter books and is keen to get through as many as she can.

I think they can go pretty quick when they "get it" sometimes, maybe especially the older ones, although not to say it doesn't happen in YR too. I think DS stayed on turquoise-ish for a while then zipped through to lime/free reading pretty quick after that. He still likes picking up any of the books I bought from about Orange band onwards though .