Who decide which book is in which reading level?

[rrbrigi]

Hi,

I am getting a bit confused about books and reading levels.
My son is on blue level. The school use lots of different books (Project X, ORT, Oxford Literacy Web, etc?). Because blue colour and turquoise colour are not so different (Turquoise looks like light blue), sometimes he brings home turquoise colour books by mistake. If I am right there are 3 level difference between blue and turquoise. When I looked one of his blue level Oxford Literacy Web book, it says at the back that the book is Stage 4. Then I looked at two of his turquoise level Oxford Literacy Web books and one of them was Stage 6 and the other was Stage 9.

How is that possible? So in Turquoise level there are 3 stages for the Oxford Literacy Web books? If I just say 1 stage for green level is Stage 5 and 1 stage for Orange level is Stage 6. But Stage 6 is already turquoise and 2 other stage is still turquoise.

Can someone explain this to me? It should be the same coding in each school, should not be?

Thanks.

There is a guide for teachers which explains what the contents of books at each level should be. mrz showed it to me. (I can't remember what it's called.) But if you listen to teachers trying to assign levels to books with no stickers on them they often seem to get in a right muddle and find it really difficult.

Do you think that your child is choosing the book himself and going to the wrong box?

Ok the coloured book bands are part of what i believe is called National Curriculum Book Bands. so pink, red, yellow, blue, green, orange, turquoise, purple, gold, white, lime.

Before these were introduced lots of different reading schemes existed with their own levels. When these book bands came along these books were reclassified/evaluated to say which book band they should fit into.

worth noting that book bands don't really apply to phonics schemes.

so how do you end up with turquoise books that are stage 6 and stage 9? well the Oxford Reading Tree stages were created by themselves. the books have then been looked at and in quite a lot of cases don't really fit in the stage they have put them in so they have been banded at different levels. Many of the non fiction books in stages 7/8/9 are actually banded at book band 9/10. many of the biff chip and kipper books at stage 9 are actually banded at book band 7 or turquoise. MOST schools should have them in the right book band boxes rather than having them in boxes based on ORT stages but some (like my daughter's) have them in boxes based on their stage numbers so we had a lot of level 10 books when she was only on book band 8. They are going to sort them at the end of term when all the books come back in.

does that make sense?

The TA bring some books into the classroom from the shelves and my son can choose from these books. I think she brings in turquoise level books by mistake, because someone put these books back to blue and she did not recognize it. These are not ORT books or I do not know, they tell Oxford Literacy Web books. These books from the Duck Green school series or something like this. I read the Stage 4 books and it was ok, then I read the stage 6 books that one was a little bit harder not too much, then I read the stage 9 books and that was hard. The difference in difficulty was bigger between the stage 6 and 9 books than the stage 4 and 6 books, however the Stage 6 and 9 are under the same reading level.

it sounds very strange to me. If a TA is bringing some into the classroom then she needs to make sure they ARE the right level.

I don't know really if they aren't ORT ones, we have had ORT, sunshine spirals, new way, reading 360, ginn but I haven't heard of duck green series.

rrbrigi I think the thing is that reading schemes and book banding methodologies each vary in the methodologies used to determine which books are easier or more difficult for someone to read.

There are a lot of factors that go in to this, length or words, ease of decoding, whether the word is common, sentence structure (short sentences are easier), length of text on pages, length of story, length of chapters, typeface, size of print, maturity of themes, complexity of imagery.

Some reading schemes also match their own structured methodology for teaching reading to the scheme, so early books will include words that their early lesson plans would include, or include material for comprehension questions covered at a particular point in the curriculum.

In my opinion problems can occur when teachers adhere to the banding methodology or reading scheme too strictly.

Each child experiences different language variations, different words may be common for that child (regional variations, out of date language in old books etc).

A child may have grasped phonic and comprehension skills for reading but their eyesight may be less well developed, so they struggle with small text and large paragraphs.

Or their concentration span might be less well developed to maintain interest for longer stories.

They could have very good reading skills but cannot understand more advanced books because the themes are too mature and they have not had enough life experience.

There are so many factors when deciding how 'difficult' a book is compared to another it is no small task to standardise the levels for each factor to produce 'stages'.

I don't think a TA would be involved in actually banding the books. She would I'm sure help sorting them into the right boxes once the teachers had stuck the appropriate stickers on.

I did not mean that the TA did the banding for the books. I meant she bring banded books to the children to the classroom.

The Duck Green School series is about a school. There is a bird (Cheep) and a teacher (Mrs Way) and a handyman (Mr Tucker) and the children.

I just thought it is interesting that there is bigger difference in difficulty between two books that is under tha same reading level, than between books that are under different reding levels.

The Duck Green ones are Oxford Literacy Web I think.
We have the problem with blue/green stickers being mixed up with turquoise too (I am a TA) and sometimes the children put books back in the wrong place.

It does depend on the series, some books in one colour band are definitely harder than others. Our school is inconsistent in banding some of these and particularly on Gold, White and Lime levels there is a huge disparity between a Treetops (level 14) and an ORT poems anthology (level 10).

Sometimes though, a book is used for group reading, and can be banded lower for this reason. There are books which have this as part of the blurb on the back. But it isn't universal.

rrbrigi I think you just need to check with the TA when you get more obviously difficult books in case someone has absent-mindedly stuck the wrong sticker on.

yes different styles vary in difficulty as they require different skills. Non Fiction is normally harder for children to read and understand and invariable will have harder words in it as part of the topic. Poetry might be easy to read the words but to read it with the right expression and to understand it can be much much harder, fiction may have many more words and be longer text but if the sentence structure is simple then it would be much easier to read.