Reading Levels

[emma123456]

My son is in Yr 2 (infant school). He's on black books so a free reader essentially. What happens at junior school? Do they start another reading scheme? Could/should he be starting this now if thats the case?

Thanks

Totally depends on the school (and possibly whether the juniors is the same school or a different one).

DS was a free reader at the end of infants, he moved to a separate juniors and they put all the free readers back onto lime level (but a wider range of lime level books than at his infants).

Other junior school have "more" levels for better readers.

A big problem with being a good reader at an early age is that the text may not be suitable for them. DD (also Y2) is a good reader but some of the books she picks up are too "grown up" for her, or she just doesn't have the background knowledge/context to be able to access the text.

DS was a free reader by yr 2 and he was able to access any of the free reading selection they had from then onwards. He didn't move back onto book bands in yr 3 but enjoyed reading things like Horrid Henry, non-fiction, the Sprinters series and anything else that took his fancy really!

I agree with above poster who said it can be a tricky task to find suitable books for early readers. Agree too that some schools do it differently- I have friends whose children were reassessed in juniors (especially if they moved schools at this point)and went back onto book bands.

Each school will do things differently.

My DC school only goes up to lime (stage 11).

How does he find the books, are they too easy for him?

Schools do seem to do levels differently DS has just finished a level of books with orange labels the school had applied but the books were anywhere from turquoise to gold on bookbands. He is now bringing home books with black labels but the actual book he has been given is a gold band book, ORT stage 9! Its a mystery to me how levels are organised!

We have some books home that have gold labels stuck over the top of black ones.

I have absolutely no idea what 'black' reading level is or was.

I just wish DS would stop bringing home 'William and Hamid' books, they are getting almost as tedious as Biff and Chip!

many schools have their own colours for book boxes depending on what stickers they could get hold of. If books from one box are a variety of levels then it is usually linked to the schemes having been reclassified. For example william and hamid (oh the joys!) were the old ORT Robins and they may say stage 7 but actually now be stage 9. most of the fireflies are harder than the stage number indicates. When the book banding was brought in these books had already been published and so were evaluated into book bands based on length, complexity of subject, sentence structure, language, font size etc. so many got moved into higher bands which can be a bit confusing. EQUALLY many of the ORT biff chip and kipper books at stage 9 are actually now all classed as book band 7 or 8 so some have gone the other way.

my daughter's school has many of them still in the wrong boxes so it has been quite confusing as they can vary by as much as 3 levels and in some cases it is instantly obvious they are harder. I am going to help them rearrange them in line with the ORT lists at the end of this term so that next year they should follow through slightly better.

and yes I did breathe a sigh of relief when we got to book box 10 and I knew the school had no Biff Chip and Kipper or William and Hamid books to send home from this one :o)

now on to the next child starting them....