book band levels

[slp123]

apologies if this has been done a million times before...
can someone explain the logic in the book band system? I know lots of school's have their own versions but I am referring to the pink, red, yellow, green, blue etc that is in a lot of schools. What makes a book red and not yellow or yellow and not blue etc.
Thanks in advance

I have no idea, my son has just moved up a book band and so far the books he is getting on the higher band are easier than he had before. i dont pay much attention to them to be honest as long as my son is making progress it dosent really matter which band he is on.

They shouldn't be getting easier as you go through the bands. They will have more text, a wider range of common words in, more difficult sentence structures etc.

Ask your child's teacher or the school's literacy co-ordinator they'll be happy to explain in my experience.

www.readingchest.co.uk/book-bands

Phonics ones like songbirds phonics introduce the different sounds in different levels as well as get longer.

in other books the book bands tend to increase number of words on page, length of sentence, length of words, number of sentences on page, number of pages in book, complexity of story, introduction of commas, dialogue, size of font etc.

Oddly the pink books seem harder than the red books in many schemes because they use words that a child can't possibly know like spaghetti or something which they are relying on the child working out from the picture. then as you go to red and up the levels they should get harder.

If you ask to see one from each level side by side you will be able to see a difference. If they are from different publishers or types of scheme though this will be less obvious and harder to compare.

If your child's school uses lots of different reading schemes instead of just one, then you probably will find some schemes easier than others on a particular colour banding. Some schemes are phonics-based and others are more look-and-say based. If your DC read strictly phonetically, they will probably find the look-and-say books harder and vice versa.

If school has a mix of schemes and your DC get to relatively freely choose from a box, steer them towards the schemes that suits them best. Otherwise maybe mention to the teacher that DC loves certain scheme and it's doing wonders for his confidence so could you have more? I banned Jelly and Bastard Bean for my personal sanity and I don't think the teacher noticed...

Thanks for all your replies... I think this answers my question...
in other books the book bands tend to increase number of words on page, length of sentence, length of words, number of sentences on page, number of pages in book, complexity of story, introduction of commas, dialogue, size of font etc.
Thanks again

The book banding system used by most major publishers is produced by IoE and Reading Recovery as a way for teachers to allocate books of a similar level of difficulty. They don't really match phonics reading books

thanks, we get a real mixture but mainly ORT ( I find them so tedious, but I'm not learning to read). My DD is doimg really well and I have no concerns about her reading, was just interested in the rationale behind the banding.

one thing I do find slightky irritating is that books with phase 5 sounds come home (which is fine as I can support her with this) but the class are just starting phase 3!!

Traditional ORT are Look & Say and don't fit with phonics teaching

yes, I fully understand that but my point is if children are supposed to be taught to read using phonics then books to support the sounds being taught would be surely more beneficial

oh yes they would. unfortunately many schools don't have them and don't have the budgets to buy them. I think a lot of schools have some phonics books but not enough so they have to keep using the old ones.

The new curriculum next year states decodable books so some schools are going to struggle

Luckily many of the books don't have many words in them. So teachers in schools with non decodable books can just cross out the non decodable words and write in decodable words in the space above. No need to spend lots of money. I'll help if anybody needs a hand.