If your child is on orange level ort

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Do they finish a whole book in one sitting? Or over 2/3 nights. DD is averaging about 2 school books a week at the moment as it takes her 2 or 3 nights to finish one. They are about 20 pages long.

I've been wondering if the level is too high for her or maybe I'm just expecting too much- she always used to finish the green books in one sitting.

I think as they develop they will be reading longer books which require additional skills such as general reading stamina and the ability to recap what has happened so far when picking up from where she last read. Like all the other skills they can take time to establish. If she's happy then it seems to be going well :)

I wouldn't expect a child to read a whole book every night

Quite normal I would say. Each move up the book bands tends to produce a loss in fluency as they have new vocab to sound out & longer sentences to get to grips with.

Around this time orange/turquoise I got DD to read more in the mornings as she was less tired & read better. Even now one of the ways I know she's ready to move up a band is because she'll start being able to whizz through her books which she has slowed down for when first moving up to a new band.

Also some books are always trickier for a particular child - DD finds non-fiction with long tricky words a slower read. I hope your DDs school use schemes other than ORT? If not I'd try and supliment as one scheme style can be limiting.

My little girl has just gone up to orange band and we read about 2 to 3 books a week

Ahh, that's good to know, thank you! She has definitely slowed down the pace which made me think they were too hard for her, but sounds like it's normal. Thanks!

Yes, DD did. She managed until she started purple. But it depends on the book. She also gets non-ORT books where the focus is more on difficult words so she may come home with a fact book of 10 pages.

But, she is determined to finish her schoolbooks and as she often forgets to swap we often only have 1 day to read.

Unless she gets chapter books I think we will continue. She reads gold now and still finishes most times on the day.

we have always read them in one go here, if I remember correctly Stage 6 are 24 pages (but with more on each page than stage 5 I think) and stage 7 then jump to 32. The first couple of stage 7 ones we had we did in 2 sittings but after that in 1 go. I always assumed it was part of building stamina. DD1 would still read them in less than 20 minutes so it seemed ok for her. Obviously when things got longer after that then a book took a couple of nights (the old jackdaws ones for example) and now chapter books take a week or so.

It depends on the child though, especially when they first move onto a harder level as it is harder text, more text, more complex story etc but once they settle with it and read it more fluently then I think aiming to do the 24 pages in 1 day isn't unrealistic, certainly only 2 days but then I am only thinking about how my children have taken to reading and all children are different. I would scan it first to see where might be a good place to stop - some of the stories are so dull that you want to stop at a good bit or she may not want to go back to it... From what friends say it seems half the children will do them in 1 go and half will only do 3 or 4 pages a night at that sort of level so nothing is right or wrong.

I agree on trying to vary the book style. One of the reasons DD1 wanted to read them in 1 go was because that then meant she could read other books the other days (only 2 or 3 school books a week so she had another 4 or 5 nights to read or co-read other stuff)

Interesting... My son just went up to level 7 and I've noticed a definite loss in fluency and the first one he needed to do in 2 readings. After that first one though he seems to be able to cope with the volume and can do it in one go. It makes me feel better to know that others found their child had a dip in fluency when they moved up a level.

I forgot to add that he gets 3 books a week and I get him to read them in the morning when he is fresher.

This is probably why it's good to have access to a range of levels at home too so they can read for sheer pleasure as well as for practice. Ds is currently trying to get to grips with 'proper books' which he is finding a bit flowery and long but I often find him reading through a stack of Mr Men or similar at bedtime which is great because he's still aware that reading is a pleasure.

ds is on orange and unless he is really in the mood he manages about half. He does have to sound out some words and that slows him down.

DS has recently gone up to the same level, and we've mostly been taking two nights to read a book. It takes a bit too long to read the whole thing. He doesn't seem to find them particularly hard, just that there is more to get through.

They get a bit long and boring about orange don't they. Actually I think it was turquoise, 32 pages where I found listening to all of it in one sitting was too deadly for both of us. Think it was about this stage where we branched out to other things though so the school book wasn't the only reading.

freetrait - turquoise and beyond are truly awful, 24 pages is more than enough I agree.

Dd has been on orange for a couple of weeks. We do them in one, two, or three sittings depending on length. She hasn't got the stamina for 24 pages at the moment, though is finding most of the words fine. She's getting through a couple of books a week now.

Looking at the post above I'm not looking forward to turquoise. Luckily it does seem she might have the skills and confidence to try some non-reading book fodder soon.

mydaftlass DD1 quickly learned to look through the box for the shortest book. she established that the poetry ones were the shortest followed by the non fiction. It was the ORT Jackdaws that nearly killed us... At least once you get to turquoise then most schools only have Biff Chip and Kipper for another couple of levels.

The book we have at the moment for ds has 32 pages. We will read it in about 4 sittings. It's not too hard, it's just that reading with him is like pulling teeth. He just doesn't enjoy it! He's willing to do it and can do it but stares into space, fidgets, distracts - we manage a few pages a day. I don't get it, it's alien to me, I was a real bookworm!

I'm not sure what level this book is, maybe gold, but when he was on orange it was the same - would take a few sittings.

periwinkle we haven't had a biff and kipper book for ages. The higher the level, the older the books they seem to dredge out. It is all rather eclectic. Last week she brought home an ancient looking reader which was a 48 page story/poetry collection! I think school must use their budget for the lowest levels.

Cat- find something he likes reading. There must be something. Don't pull teeth, reading should be joyful. Once they are orange and certainly gold there are loads of real books to choose from. Can you read with him- one page each, that takes the pressure off?

Our gold books aren't real/proper books, they're still dodgy basal readers.

DS2 (Y1) is not on orange level yet (L5 ORT - not sure what colour that is, green maybe?) but he is now unable to finish it in one night, up until now he could whizz through them. He is set about 5 pages a night by the teacher and most of the time this is enough for him.

At DS1s school even the lime level books were still awful, uninteresting books so by that point it is painful as the DCs were reading much more interesting stuff at home instead, reading the school books was a token effort for 10 mins a night TBH.

I have tried him with all sorts, rarely does anything spark his interest. He's probably above gold level- brings home a mixture from school, sometimes white. We've had marginally more success with fact books than fiction, and the only school book we've had recently that he enjoyed a bit more was a v old one, 'the rocket' - about something called the slinx and the fuzz buzzes - has anyone come across these before? But even that was like pulling teeth until we got to the last few pages.

He still likes being read to so I'm holding on to that as hope that one day he might like reading! He's very active, and will do maths all day long, loves statistics so there is some hope, but he does like his computer games and would choose that over a book!

I am lucky - at the moment once they have finished lime they then get to read a whole load of early readers (some of which are ok) and then they can take in their own books if they have access to them if they prefer. DD1 is only in Yr1 so they obviously need to develop a lot of reading experience in general before they move up any further and this makes sense as it keeps their enthusiasm for reading. well it is working for the ones we know in this position. Much less stress getting reading done now she has a free choice of stories.

I must agree I think most budget goes on the lower books (hopefully buying phonetic ones). I really wish I was in a position to just buy some early reader type ones for them. I should have got them some when the corgi pups ones were £1 each in Sainsburys in the summer but I didn't think about it.