Reading comprehension Y3 and Y4 - what does your school do?

[musicalfamily]

My eldest two children are in Y3 and Y4. They both left Y2 with high level 3s in reading and they both read a lot at home, but my DD1 did not progress at all last year and after further investigations on the matter, we found that the school:

• did not set for reading (guided reading in mixed ability groups, mostly TA asking generic questions)
• did not set comprehension questions/texts in class apart from the assessment ones
• no spellings sent home for additional vocabulary.

They say that the reading they do at home, aided by questions by me should be enough to get them to progress to L4, but from bitter experience it's not enough. So what do they do in your school and what can I do on top? I bought some KS2 Letts papers and it is a disaster they can't do them at all at L4. I feel very disheartened and not quite sure where to start from. When they read with me they understand the books pretty well, both fiction and non-fiction, maybe I am not pitching the books hard enough, we just pick them from the library as school have stopped sending books home since KS1. Any advice appreciated!!!!

Although I teach year 5/6 the same principles apply in the yr 3/4 class!
We set for guided reading, I have 6 groups in my class with between 4-6 children in each. Group are led by teachers, not TAs. Comprehension passages sent home each week for homework, split into 4 ability levels ( I use
www.amazon.co.uk/Improving-Comprehension-10-11/dp/0713689919/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1380393806&sr=8-5&keywords=improving+comprehension for my groups ( 3 levels plus a low ability equivalent for my lowest group)
spelling sent home each week, and tested, to increase vocabulary the tests involve the children putting the words into sentences correctly and finding definitions rather than simply learning the spelling
Levelled home reading books sent home- our reading scheme continues to level 5.

Although a school in a struggling area, we achieved 54% Level 5 readers this year.

My DS is in Yr 4 and has had a couple of reading comprehension homeworks that were related to topic work. For one of them there was 5 qu's starting with simply filling in the blanks, then 2 fairly straightforward ones, qu 4 asked why they thought someone had been given the nickname 'Strongbow'. The answer was not in the passage and my DS wanted to write I don't know!! When I pointed out that it said 'why do you THINK...' he then suggested googling!! I have no idea what kind of level the work was but teacher friends seemed to think thia type of inference question was quite tricky. I'm sure if you google it you will probably find some examples of different levels

In my dds class in year 3 they are split to ability level for literacy and phonics. They also do the guided read in ability level and the questions asked are also to the childs ability. But no spellings are brought home.

Thanks all...sounds like our school is doing the minimum...
Spanieleyes, would you mind sharing what scheme you would use for a L4 and would it be worth me doing that instead of just reading any book? (I don't want to kill the joy of reading!!!)

On the other hand, we also get a very high percentage of level 5 readers (~80%). Our children do no written comprehensions and have no scheme books beyond white level. They do, however, have targeted guided reading once per week as well as reading and discussing a class novel. No spellings either! So there is probably more than one way to go about this.
My youngest DD, who is 12, still loves me to read to her. This is when we discuss the books and what's happening.

prettydaisies but are you sure the parents are not doing the comprehension papers at home? Our school also gets very high L5s but I have learned that many children already have a tutor in Y4 and others are doing practise papers (maths and English) every day at home....madness!!!

Not set for reading in fact reading barely monitored they have improvement book and two library books at any one time. In class they use a text in similar ways to how you do in senior school read a bit discuss themes etc. last year they used Invasion and Spiderwick Cronicles. This year they have started with Friend or Foe.
No spellings at all school doesn't believe in them.
Comprehension every week.
School achieves very high levels of literacy at the nod of year 6.

We use Collins Big Cat series books, the children seem to like them and they are certainly an improvement on ORT! They have questions and activities at the back of the book and you can also download further activities from the Big Cat website

I'm sure most of our parents aren't doing comprehension papers at home or employing tutors and like prettydaisies's school we achieve well in the NC reading tests. We don't use guided reading so all comprehension is covered in class studies of quality texts.

Ds's old school gets roughly 70% level 5 in yr 6 and they don't do anything like sending home old papers, nor do any of the parents buy them as far as I know, nor do the parents employ tutors, nor does school set dry comprehension style questions in classwork or homework (ever).

They do do guided reading. They do teach good understanding and inference skills solidly through whole school literacy which pervades every aspect of the curriculum. They do send home some practice SATs papers around Easter of yr 6.