Flipping heck. DD book this week is....

[Shattereddreams]

y1
Scheme is ORT once a week, the old ones which I thought at 20 years plus was bad enough.....

Today she bought home on the non scheme book day.....

Mr Brown's goat. It was written in 1972. The infamous Roger red hat and Billy blue hat.

It's utter tripe. Repetitive tripe.

Is anyone else subjected to these? Weren't they banned?????

[richmal]

Or why not ask your school to send a letter out to parents asking them to donate books as their children out grow them?

[PolkadotCircus]

Hmmm no I don't think that is good enough.

Schools have had countless injections of cash since Rodger Red Hat et al were superseded by other more interesting books far more likely to inspire children to want to read more.

At our pretty average school the monthly cake sale raised just under £150- more than enough to buy a pack of half decent books.

The book in question has either been forgotten and needs binning or somebody isn't spending school literacy money properly.

As an aside does anybody remember those gold,silver pirate books [old gimmer emoticon]?

[PolkadotCircus]

You can get 25 ORT books from The Book People for £14,they do phonic packs too.Schools have access to a whole host of discounted book companies.

[cazzybabs]

PolkadotCircus - maybe they have other things to spend money on!

TBH alll reading scheme books are tripe. Your example Shattereddreams may be dated but doesn't sound anything unlike you would get now and most of those phonemes on the words are letters and sounds stage 5 (where a good year 1 should be).
And the kidnap example - depends on the child. I haven't a problem with it and have sent it home for year 1s before now. We do have some books where I do think about if it suitable but that is not one. Read it and see it as a good way of talking about stranger danger or don't read it. However, as a parent I don;t shelter my children from the horrors of the world!

[mrz]

sorry Polkadot schools don't have any access to discounted book companies ... we can and do use our own money to buy packs from The Book People but in general orders have to go through official channels and that means publishers and full prices.

[PolkadotCircus]

No don't buy that at all.

Books should be the priority.What exactly comes before making sure kids aren't being given utter shite and switched off reading for life?

Rodger Red Hat went out years ago.I know because I was the literacy co-ordinator who binned them in the school I was in and then replaced them with new books bought with a not small amount of money allocated for the job.

Schools have literacy budgets and most have PTA money,there is absolutely no excuse and I think any OFSTED inspector would have a fit if they stumbled across The Village With Three Corners.

There is also the race and gender issue.

[mrz]

Schools that have invested thousands of pounds (and yes that's how much it costs) for a reading scheme can be reluctant to change.
I'm fortunate to teach in a school that sees books are a priority (we've just spent £2000 on books for KS2) other schools see a TA in every class as more important

[mrz]

and many, many schools were given a "negative budget increase" this year (that is the official language for reduction in money available)

[PandaNot]

PTA money is not supposed to be used for reading books, even though lots of schools do. PTA funds are supposed to be used to enhance the curriculum, not provide things that should come out of budgets.

[PolkadotCircus]

But Rodger Red Hat was superceded back in the 80s and 90s,plenty of time and countless allocations of cash since to replace them with.There is no excuse,I can't believe any school would have loads of them anyhow so very cheap to replace.They've been out of print for decades,god knows what condition said book in question is in.

As you say there is always The Book People,Red House and Scholastic-even their packs would be better than Rodger Red Hat.

Then there is the gender and race issues.How can any school justify sending them home?

I personally as a parent would rather go without a TA for a year if my dc were subjected to that drivel week after week.

[cazzybabs]

PolkadotCircus - I do agree with that but what as a school your reading levels are good and most of your children are reading at or above national average and you know your parents read to their children, take them to the library etc etc but you can see an issue with racism or boys writing or your maths equipment etc etc etc and you want your PTA to help invest in that.

AND maybe they decided not to priotise reading books but to spend money on their library for example.

Plus most schools budgets are set so X can be spent on that and Y on this and there is no allowance of some of Y you have left over to be spend o z.

[PolkadotCircus]

I think not replacing a few Red Hat books at say a cost of £30 max is lazy and there is no excuse however good your reading levels are.

Do OFTED not check resources anymore?I remember going through all our books and auditing yearly in case of a big visit.

[mrz]

But Rodger Red Hat was superceded back in the 80s and 90s by what? Genuine question

[mrz]

PolkadotCircus how far do you think £30 will go in a school reading scheme!

[PolkadotCircus]

Wasn't that when ORT became popular?

By the 90s I rarely saw Three Corners and saw a shed load of ORT.We were completely ORT in the school I was in early 90s and it was hardly a cutting edge school.

No school is going to have Three Corners as their reading scheme seeing as it has been out of print for years and is errr rather shite. If there are a few Three Corners books ie non school main scheme books it wouldn't be that hard to bin and replace with a few other non main scheme books. You could get £50 ORT books for that price or some real books or phonic packs.The 3 companies already mentioned sell loads of cheap packs.

They had phonic packs pre Xmas.

There is no excuse for a Red Hat book unless it was being used for a history lesson!

[mrz]

Roger Red Hat was last published in 1998

[mrz]

You aren't honestly saying that ORT books are any better?

[PolkadotCircus]

Absolutely not phonics all the way here however I personally would rather if it came down to it my dc had ORT,real books,a cheap bp phonic pack or nothing than Roger Red Hat-it was first published in the 60s and by the 80s kids were already sick of it.I rem uni being highly critical of it(admittedly they were pushing the real books thing back then).

I'm shocked it was still being published in the 90s,where did you find that out,I can't believe schools were buying it in their droves back then as a main school scheme.I rarely saw it by 2003 when I was doing a lot of supply.

[MrsSchadenfreude]

I remember we had some hilarious books when DD1 was learning to read. There was one series about professions, and we had Mrs Thing the Vet, who was a single parent - there was a line in it saying something like "Mr Thing left Mrs Thing to live with his secretary, but we won't be discussing him here."

[PolkadotCircus]

In schools with low literacy levels ie school books being the only thing read they would be a dreadful turn off,in a school with high literacy parents will get themselves to a library.

There is no excuse.

Op I think said book needs a dreadful dog eating accident.

World Book Day is coming up,every kid bring in a £1-job done,nice BP phonic or ORT pack,job done,not hard!

[Fizzylemonade]

The spookiest book ever is where Chip and BIff are helping to decorate their house and they come across a hidden door.

Behind the hidden door is a secret room, complete with a doll's house which is a replica of their house. The spookiest bit is where there are little figures of Chip, Biff and Kipper dressed in Victorian clothing and a Floppy the dog figure too.

This all went right over my son's heads as they have both read it but it freaked me out

My two have had a wide variety of books over the years, just like when I read books, some are mind blowing, others not so much. We just read whatever school gives us.

[mrz]

I actually bought Sita and the Little Old Woman from Amazon for 1p along with a Janet and John book and it has the date of publication

[messybedhead]

In my school teachers are crying our for new reading books but the school ( and most of the parents) are obsessed by Biff and Chip and seem to think that the level the child reads for those awful books somehow relates to their child's ability to decode.

The PTA have asked if they can spend their money buying new books but they were told that they weren't allowed to.

The new curriculum proposal mentions children having to read books appropriate to their phonic knowledge and hopefully schools will be forced into replacing look and say reading and schemes.

I live in hope!

[jalapeno]

Fizzylemonade I remember that one and thinking it was a bit sinister!

[Wewereherefirst]

Oh Fizzy That was quite scary! My DS loved that story.

Sadly, the school reading schemes do not encourage a healthy love of reading, a lot of the books are not ones children would necessarily pick up and read out side of school.

I suppose it is up to parents to supplement the reading materials but it is not good to still have books with any form of racism/sexism/stereotypes.